Use these resources to teach your students about the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his impact on the civil rights movement.

1. Why we honor Martin Luther King Jr .

Use this short text to help students understand why Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and legacy.

2. Interactive timeline of the history of the civil rights movement

An interactive timeline filled with video and text about the events that shaped the civil rights movement.  For teachers there is a timeline guide that denotes the event and the length of its corresponding video. Access a full-screen version of this timeline here .

3. Short video biographies of Martin Luther King Jr. from Biography.com .

4. “Lesson plan: "I Have a Dream” as a Work of Literature

Students will study Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and discuss the rhetorical influences on King’s speech, the oratorical devices that King uses in delivering his speech and how a speech is similar to/different from other literary forms.