UW Libraries Blog

January 11, 2024

Celebrating MLK

UW Libraries

updated 1/2024

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day, UW Libraries encourages you to explore resources within our collections and across campus that reflect Dr. King’s work and collective efforts to combat racism, inequality, and injustice in our community and beyond.

  • UW Libraries Racial Justice Resource Guide, for recommended readings, podcasts, videos, and articles across a spectrum of topics including researching racial justice, healthcare injustice, race, and environmental justice, teaching children about race, and more.
  • MLK visit to Seattle – Seattle Labor History Project At the invitation of his friend, Reverend Samuel B McKinney, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Seattle in November 1961. The visit proved to be much more controversial than expected. Rev. McKinney tells the story in a dramatic video interview.
  • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day – Streaming Video Display from UW Bothell Library’s Social Justice Team:  a virtual display highlighting streaming videos in our collections that touch on themes related to fights for racial and social justice in the United States since the mid-20th century. More specifically, we have grouped the videos by their specific themes to enable “browsing” across this display. Examples of titles include:

film cover image

Whose Streets?  “Told by the activists and leaders who live and breathe this movement for justice, Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson uprising.”

All Power to the People!  “Opening with a montage of four hundred years of racial injustice in America, this powerful documentary provides the historical context for the establishment

of the 60s civil rights movement.”

Arc of justice: the rise, fall and rebirth of a beloved community  “This film traces the remarkable journey of New Communities, Inc. and the struggle for racial justice and economic empowerment among African Americans in southwest Georgia.”

UW Libraries Reading Groups with a Social Justice Focus

REAL Lit:

Real Lit is an online, peer-based book club led by UW Tacoma Library, in collaboration with the Center for Equity and Inclusion. In the context of the chosen book, students, staff, and community participants share their perspectives and collective experiences.  The winter 2024 selection is reading When We Were Magic, by Sarah Gailey, for Winter Quarter 2024! This is the 20th book for our award-winning social justice book club!  We can’t wait to start this work of speculative fiction that explores female friendship amidst a backdrop brimming with queer romance, fantasy, humor and more!  Real Lit is open to anyone in the UW community. Click here to learn more.

Community Reads:

Hosted by the UW Bothell/Cascadia College Library, this annual program aims to build community through reading and group reflection. Each quarter, we will be focusing on a different short story from the selected text, and the unique ways that these authors are dreaming the world.  For the 2023-2024 academic year, Community Reads will be focusing on the book Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, an anthology of visionary fiction about climate justice.

Community Reads events include large and small group discussions and activities related both to the material itself as well as to larger issues. This program is open to everyone.  Learn more here and follow us on social media to find out when the winter quarter programming is posted!

Additional Resources

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