Tonight PBS’s American Experience had a special on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. entitled Citizen King.

It was really amazing. There was a ton of footage, much of it I hadn’t seen before, and interviews with all the people who surrounded him at that time from the SCLC. One stunning piece of footage sounded so incredibly eerie in relation to current events and I wanted to share it here:

“And don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You are too arrogant! If you don’t change your ways I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name! Be still and know that I am God.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King at the Riverside Church, New York City, 4 April 1967