MLK and the Meeting That Never Was

Abstract

In a speech given to students at Grosse Pointe High School on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before his death, Martin Luther King addressed the uprisings that consumed America during this time. During the same time that King delivered this speech, plans were underway for a retreat that would have brought King together with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. While we will never know what both men would have talked about or what they would have done, I do believe—at least in so far as King is concerned—that he would have undoubtedly spoken about his concept of the Beloved Community.