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What to Watch for Martin Luther King Day

Explore the life and legacy of America’s historic civil rights leader with these 10 dramas and documentaries


spinner image Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta
AP Photo

Arguably the best way to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have been 95 on Jan. 15, is to volunteer in the social justice realm. But if you’re looking to understand the life, times and legacy of the minister-activist, and engage with the moral and tactical lessons of the early civil rights movement, here are 10 films and series from the 1970s to the present that will resonate and infuriate but also inspire anew.

Rustin, PG-13 (2023)

Colman Domingo, 54, brings to vivid life Bayard Rustin, the man who helped make the dream of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (famously the site of MLK’s “I have a dream” address) a reality. Because Rustin was a gay Black man, the lifelong activist’s role in the event was contested at the time, notably by Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock, 58), and repressed too often in the history of the movement. Domingo — a Golden Globe, and likely Oscar, nominee — makes sure the architect of the March is never again forgotten.

Watch it: Rustin on Netflix

MLK/FBI (2020)

Director Sam Pollard’s documentary about the surveillance of King and his circle of activists provides a sobering reminder that a social justice movement — righteous but also built on nonviolence — was treated as a threat to national security by J. Edgar Hoover’s near fiefdom and Red Scare overreach. One wonders, had the FBI been as avid in its pursuit of the domestic terrorists who plotted King’s assassination as it was in making and exploiting recordings of King’s personal life, would the civil rights luminary have continued to live and to lead?

Watch it: MLK/FBI on YouTube

King in the Wilderness (2018)

In this documentary marking the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, his confidants, colleagues and friends share the emotional and spiritual toll the minister endured in the final two years of his life. The burdens grew heavier as he focused on the Vietnam War as one of three evils bedeviling the U.S. (the other two being racism and poverty). King in the Wilderness finds a man who is thoughtful and worn, but also profoundly, even prophetically, aware of his mortality.

Watch it: King in the Wilderness on Max

Selma, PG-13 (2014)

There is the terrorism of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham and the police assault on marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge; there are the tense meetings in which King (David Oyelowo) pushes President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) toward the nation’s landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964; there is the touching intimacy of King and wife Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo, 50, also played her in HBO’s Boycott 13 years earlier). For all this action, at the wise heart of Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, 51, is a drama that captures the vision but also the strategic resolve of not just King but the many gathered around him to challenge and change the nation for the better.

Watch it: Selma on Prime Video, Paramount+

Betty and Coretta (2013)

Members of their families and sticklers for historical facts took issue with this Lifetime movie about Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz (rightly, we might add). Even so, the women’s own legacies and the friendship they forged after the assassinations of their husbands (Shabazz was the widow of Malcolm X) are worth celebrating and the two performers — Angela Bassett, 65, as King, and Mary J. Blige, 53, as Shabazz — worth watching.

Watch it: Betty and Coretta on Prime Video

spinner image Jeffrey Wright as MLK in Boycott
Jeffrey Wright in “Boycott.”
Alamy Stock Photo

Boycott, PG (2001)

Jeffrey Wright, 58, portrays the good reverend in this HBO film about the bus boycott that began with activist Rosa Parks (Iris Little-Thomas) refusing to cede her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. What started as a one-day boycott by the city’s Black residents held fast for more than a year, catapulted a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence, and led to the 1956 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public transportation.   

Watch it: Boycott on Max

spinner image Poster art for the documentary 4 Little Girls
HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection

4 Little Girls (1997)

With his first documentary, Spike Lee, 66, proved his mettle and his compassion as a nonfiction filmmaker. On Sept. 15, 1963, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson — each 14 years old — and Carol Denise McNair, 11, were killed in a terrorist bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. “These children — unoffending, innocent and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity,” said King in the eulogy he gave for three of the girls. If King’s tribute celebrated them as martyrs, Lee restores them here as vivacious young girls, as daughters with unknown futures, torn from their parents, siblings and loved ones, their loss oh-so palpable.

Watch it: 4 Little Girls on Max

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (1987)

This monumental, six-part series provides a brilliant, vital and humbling starting point for a deep dive into the civil rights movement. Or, as executive producer Henry Hampton called it, “America’s second revolution.” Dr. King makes his first, but hardly last, appearance in the first episode, “Awakenings: 1954–1956.”

Watch it: Eyes on the Prize on Max, Prime Video

spinner image Paul Winfield stars as Martin Luther King Jr. in "King."
Paul Winfield in “King.”
Filmways Television/Courtesy Everett Collection

King (1978)

Broadcast a year after Roots, this miniseries was as much a ratings disappointment as the latter was a cultural bonanza, and some civil rights leaders objected that it didn’t accurately depict King’s heroism. But Coretta Scott King defended it as a drama, not a documentary, and Paul Winfield, the first actor to portray King in a major show, earned an Emmy nomination in his favorite role ever, as did Cicely Tyson, as Coretta, and Dr. King’s close friend Ossie Davis, as Martin Luther King Sr. 

Watch it: King on Apple TV+

King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis (1970)

Hollywood luminaries Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve; Suddenly, Last Summer) wove this classic documentary entirely from archival footage. It was entered into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1999.

Watch it: King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis on YouTube

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