What to Watch for Martin Luther King Day

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.

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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+