ABHM Book Club: Where Do We Go From Here by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
We are pleased to announce ABHM’s January Book of the Month: Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We invite you to join us on January 24 at 1:30 p.m. for a discussion of the book at America’s Black Holocaust Museum or virtually via Zoom.
History Toward Tomorrow: Why This Matters
In the year 2026 the United States is celebrating its semiquincentennial. At ABHM, we are using this as an opportunity to create programs where we can collectively reflect on our country’s history honestly to build a better, more equitable future. The selections for the ABHM Book Club in 2026 will emphasize historical truth-telling, compelling storytelling, and diverse perspectives on our collective past. We invite participants to consider what they want the country to look like over the next 250 years. What can we learn from visionaries, historians, and thought leaders from the past in how we envision the United States of the future? In the spirit of Dr. Cameron, we invite you to join us on this journey of reflection, healing, and dreaming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? captures Martin Luther King Jr.’s sober assessment of the Civil Rights Movement at a pivotal moment, after landmark legal victories had dismantled formal segregation but left deeper systems of inequality intact. King argues that the nation now faced challenges more complex than Jim Crow laws—entrenched poverty, housing segregation, economic exploitation, and racial injustice in both North and South. He confronts rising white resistance and critiques the complacency of white moderates who embraced gradualism while resisting the structural changes required for genuine equality. Legal rights alone, King insists, could not produce freedom without economic justice and moral commitment.
At the same time, King engages the growing influence of Black Power, acknowledging the anger and despair that fueled it while rejecting separatism and violence as paths that ultimately fractured coalition-building and obscured shared humanity. He calls instead for a bold, interracial movement rooted in nonviolence, economic redistribution, and democratic renewal. Linking domestic injustice to global violence, King condemns the Vietnam War as a moral failure that diverted resources from the fight against poverty at home. Ultimately, the book stands as a prophetic warning and a hopeful challenge, asking whether America will descend into division—or summon the courage to build a just, inclusive community.