10 Movies To Watch On Martin Luther King Jr. Day

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Today we celebrate Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  In honor of Dr. King, here are 10 Movies you may want to binge today.

  • Selma (for rent on Amazon)
  • All The Way (streaming on HBO Max)
  • Boycott (streaming on HBO Max)
  • The Rosa Parks Story (streaming on Sling)
  • Get on the Bus (for sale on Amazon)
  • Malcolm X (for rent on Amazon)
  • For Us The Living: The Medgar Evers Story (for rent on Vudu)
  • Harriet (streaming on HBO Max)
  • The Butler (streaming on Netflix)
  • Remember The Titans (streaming on Disney+)
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi.
King participated in and led marches for blacks’ right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.
King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray on Thursday, April 4, 1968, as he stood on a local motel’s second-floor balcony. After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph’s Hospital. King’s autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he “had the heart of a 60 year old”, which is commonly attributed to the stress of 13 years in the civil rights movement.
Beginning in 1971, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and states established annual holidays to honor King. At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. This holiday was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986.
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Photo Credit:  Shutterstock / Roman_studio