Martin Luther King Jr.’s Daughter Reveals Topic Of Scathing Sermon He Never Got To Give

Bernice King said the speech her father had planned before he died was titled “America May Go to Hell.”

Two of Martin Luther King Jr.’s surviving children gave powerful sermons Tuesday from the pulpit their father stood at when he gave his final speech on April 3, 1968.

During the I AM 2018 event on Tuesday, Bernice King informed the audience at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee, that she was going to go a bit off-script as the holy spirit moved her to invite her brother, Martin Luther King III, to stand next to her as she spoke. She said their brother Dexter King, though not physically present, was standing with them as well.

The youngest King child then went on to reveal that on the day he was assassinated, her father told his mother the title of his next address: “America May Go to Hell.”

“If you would permit me, I think as I look at the landscape of our world today, America may still go to hell,” Bernice King warned. “So 50 years later, I’m here to declare and decree not only must America be born again but it’s time for America to repent.”

She said America has fumbled its responsibility to deal with the three evils her father warned about: racism, poverty and militarism.

“We have not, in 50 years, dealt with, as daddy challenged us to deal with, the last vestiges of racism,” she said. “We must repent because daddy challenged us to deal with a second evil: poverty, which we have refused to confront in this nation.”

She added that militarism “has robbed us of the necessary resources to address the social injustices and the social ills and the social discrepancies in our nation,” noting that her father said countries who spend more money on military than social advancement are “rapidly approaching a spiritual death.”

With a cadence in her voice similar to her father’s, Bernice King challenged America to break its “vicious cycles” and praised the Parkland, Florida, students for standing up against gun violence and “social decay.” She also noted that it wasn’t by chance that the granddaughter of the civil rights leader stood onstage during the recent March For Our Lives rally to call for a “gun-free world.”