King in the Wilderness (2018)

Really powerful documentary about Martin Luther King Jr. and the final campaigns of his life. Insightful portrait of a man who gave his life to the cause of justice, whose goals America has yet to fully realize.

King in the Wilderness follows about the last 18 months of Dr. King’s life. At this point, he’s already helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott, marched in Selma, and given his “I Have a Dream” speech. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have both passed and been signed into law. But Dr. King’s campaigns on behalf of his people are far from over. He knows that it’s not just in the South that Black people are struggling, so he comes to Chicago to fight housing inequality. He knows that equal rights under the law aren’t the only thing required for people to have a true chance at living the American dream, so he organizes to advocate for poor people everywhere. He works to hold the movement together amidst diverging ideologies, and he speaks against the Vietnam War because it’s the right thing to do, even though he knows it will cause friction between him and President Johnson. Right to the end, he never stops fighting.

As someone who came up in the U.S. public school system, I was used to getting “Black History month highlights” every year, including repeated looks at the thumbnail version of Dr. King’s life and accomplishments. But I knew very little about this period of his life and it’s fascinating to learn about. The movement’s campaigns in Chicago immediately brought to mind Richard Wright’s Black Boy, in which he left the Jim Crow-era South only to realize that the North was far from the safehaven he’d imagined it would be. It’s interesting to see how the SCLC and SNCC have to adapt to fighting the different tactics of discrimination in the North, while at the same time, the pushback and hatred they experience from the white public there is eerily similar to what happens to them in the South. I also knew very little about the Poor People’s Campaign, which is quite in line with some of the present-day debate around economic opportunity and reparations. I like that Dr. King was incredibly aware that it would be a much harder fight than what they’d already been through, since the civil and voting rights they’d previously been fighting for wouldn’t “cost” white society anything, not like economic justice would.

While the documentary covers some topics I already knew a little about, it was still very informative on these subjects. Things like Dr. King’s thoughts and feelings about Vietnam, the FBI’s surveillance of him, and the growing ideological differences within the movement. It’s very affecting to listen to phone conversations between Johnson and Dr. King in which Johnson basically feels he’s “given” the SCLC/SNCC what they wanted and doesn’t see why they’re still “demanding” more, and Dr. King’s careful needle-threading to try and distance himself from Stokely Carmichael’s methods without overtly condemning him are interesting.

Many living figures from the movement are interviewed, and I love hearing their perspective on things they experienced during that time. I also really love the more personal details shared about Dr. King: the jokes he used to tell, how he’d please the crowd at parties, his private doubts, and the way he wrestled with the burdens he carried. One of my favorite scenes was the footage of an impromptu birthday celebration given for him during an organizational meeting, during a time when he’d been feeling very low and the woman who bursts in with an assortment of gag gifts has been given the task of making him laugh again. I think there’s such a strong tendency to view people like Dr. King as figures, or even symbols, rather than just people, and even as this documentary focuses on all kinds of incredible work he did, it also reminds us that he was a person with friends and private jokes, struggles and questions. Just really well-done all around.

Warnings

Violence, language (including racial slurs,) and strong thematic elements.