Levels of Love

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 86 recordings of Martin Luther King Jr. →

1. 1962

   The Dimensions of a Complete Life

   A January 1962 recording of King’s much-repeated sermon on the three dimensions of a complete life (length, breadth and height — love of self, of others and of God), held by the Pacifica Radio Archives and rebroadcast in its King special.

2. 1962

   A Knock at Midnight

   King’s sermon on Luke 11:5–6, the church as the friend who must answer when the world knocks ‘at midnight’, preached as Abernathy was installed at his new Atlanta pulpit after leaving Montgomery to join King.

3. 1962

   Towards Freedom

   A full hour-long address to a packed Dartmouth hall on the state of race relations in 1962, in which King lays out three ‘attitudes’ toward progress (extreme optimism, extreme pessimism, and the realism he endorses) and makes the case for nonviolent direct action and federal action.

4. 1962

   Interview for Belgian broadcasting

   A four-minute audio excerpt of King answering a European interviewer’s questions on the American racial situation, uploaded as a 1962 Belgian television interview.

5. 1962

   Address to the National Press Club

   A week after choosing jail over a fine in Albany, King became the first African American to address the National Press Club. The 47-minute recording covers federal action, nonviolent direct action, ‘tokenism’ and the ‘American dream’, and the Q&A ranges over Albany, Kennedy’s record, the Nation of Islam and Africa.

6. 1962

   Emancipation Proclamation centennial address

   Rediscovered in the New York State Museum’s collection in 2013 and made public in January 2014, this is the only known recording of King’s address marking the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

7. 1962

   Levels of Love

   A month after leaving Albany, King preached on the ascending levels of love — utilitarian, romantic, maternal, friendship, humanitarian and agape — and told his congregation about a white Albany man whose affection for Black people depended on their ‘staying in his place’.

8. 1962

   Can a Christian Be a Communist?

   A lecture-like sermon arguing that Christianity and communism are ‘fundamentally opposed’ on atheism, ethics and the state, while insisting that communism exposes the church’s failures on economic justice and segregation; it became ‘How Should a Christian View Communism?’ in ‘Strength to Love’.

9. 1963

   Address at the Detroit Walk to Freedom

   King’s closing address to the Walk to Freedom, a march of roughly 125,000 people down Woodward Avenue organized with Rev. C.L. Franklin.

10. 1963

    Meet the Press, three days before the March on Washington

    King and Roy Wilkins defended the forthcoming March on Washington against predictions of violence and argued that the movement should keep pressing rather than pause for the civil rights bill then before Congress. It was King’s second of five Meet the Press appearances.

11. 1963

    I Have a Dream

    The closing address of the March on Washington, delivered to roughly 250,000 people and carried live on television. Its improvised ‘I have a dream’ peroration became the most famous passage of twentieth-century American oratory and anchored public support for the civil rights bill.

12. 1963

    The March

    The U.S. Information Agency’s 1964 documentary follows marchers preparing for and traveling to Washington and culminates in extended footage of King’s speech from the Lincoln Memorial.

13. 1963

    Social Justice and the Emerging New Age

    A 48-minute lecture-and-Q&A appearance at Western Michigan University less than four months after the March on Washington.