     In his "The World House" essay, Martin Luther King Jr. presents the idea that the world is one big house and that all of mankind is living together in this house. With this idea, he is trying to make the point that the human species needs to find a better way to live together on the earth. This essay was written during the Civil Rights Movement, which lasted from 1955-1968.

     Many people think of Martin Luther King Jr. as just a civil rights advocate, with only the intentions of ending racism between the white and black people of America. From this essay, the reader discovers that MLK is about much more than just equality throughout the United States. If everyone in the world dedicated themselves to living as King says we should in this essay, the world would be totally at peace, having no racism or inequality throughout it.

     He talks about how over the past hundred years how so much has changed in the world environmentally, technologically, geographically, etc. With all this change, the world is much more interconnected than it used to be. With all of this growth and new knowledge about different parts of the world, he talks about how people have to learn to live together in peace rather than consider ourselves totally separate entities that are divided by water. He touches on a few different points in his essay such as racism, poverty, and the usage of military in this day and age.

     King, like many other Americans, thinks that whether a person is white, brown, black or yellow, they are still a person. Martin Luther King Jr. cites Arnold Toynbee's work in his essay when he writes that of the twenty six countries that have risen up to power in the world, that not one of them has remained in power. He goes on to explain that the reason these nations lose power is not from an external factor but from the internal decay that is caused by racism and injustice within the nation. Looking back on history, every time there has been a long period of injustice in a country there has been a revolution to go along with it. 

     King also had a lot to say about poverty in his essay. He mentions that even though poverty has been a significant problem throughout all of history, there is a different aspect to it now. Poverty used to be an unsolvable problem because there was never enough wealth in the world for everyone to live a good, comfortable life. King's belief is that now the problem of poverty isn't in the lack of money throughout the world, its in the lack of human motivation to stop this growing issue of poverty. He stated that if every rich nation just donated one or two percent of their income for each year to the poor and undeveloped nations, that after a period of time poverty would no longer be an issue to anyone living in the world house. 

     Another one of MLK's main points in his essay stressed the importance of dialing down every nation's military. He thinks that if there is going to ever be peace throughout the world that it must begin with the ceasing of all wars and the beginning of nations settling their disputes through use of diplomatic strategies. With technology at the point that it is in this day and age, there is no room for another World War. A World War III would most likely end in the depletion of all mankind with the nuclear weapons that there are today. In his essay, MLK quotes John F. Kennedy when he says, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind" (King 294). This quote from the essay is pretty self explanatory in its meaning that mankind will never prosper if it continues to fight amongst itself.

     King asks every nation to take an approach at nonviolence. Even though throughout all of history there has been violence, humans cannot afford to keep this up. King mentions the United Nations and their effort to end war. He talks about how the UN has done a good job of keeping peace throughout some of the largest nations in the world by settling issues with words rather than weapons.

     In an article written nearly fifty years after King presented "The World House", Malcolm Jones talks about the impact that this idea can have on the world today if it is read and considered by everyone. Jones talks about the difference between the speech that Martin Luther King Jr. gave on the day of his Nobel Peace Prize award and other speeches he had given in the past. The viewer can tell from this speech that there is a lack of emotion that seemed so prevalent in his other speeches. Malcolm Jones insists that the reason for King's somewhat reserved way of going about giving this speech was not the nerves of publicly speaking getting to him but rather an intentional aspect to his speech. He wanted the listener to focus on what he was saying rather than how he was saying it. King accepts the Nobel Peace Prize but he says that he is doing so on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement, and not on his own behalf. Another interesting point Jones made in his article regarded to a specific thing King said in his speech. Jones pointed out the sentence where King said, "Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize" (Jones 1). Jones explains that this was not said because King was rejecting the peace prize, but rather because King wanted to stress the fact that this time had not been a great time of peace. He was explaining how there is nothing to celebrate about a time where an entire race fell victim of an unjust country. 

     In a more relevant article to the time from which MLK was a part of, Larry Goodwyn expresses the ideas of the side that King is not a part of. "Anarchy in St. Augustine" was a Harper's Magazine article that was written in 1965, just after King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the year before. It was written by a southern white man who's goal was to keep society at the status quo. This status quo was one where white people were the dominant power and black people were fighting to gain equality amongst the whites throughout America. Goodwyn talks about a certain group of people in St. Augustine who have a more aggressive approach than most. This group was known as Manucy's Raiders, as it was led by Holstead Manucy. This group was also known as the "Gun Club" in St. Augustine. Manucy was very clear about his intentions when it came to black people. He said, "My boys are here to fight niggers. Martin Luther King? He's a nigger. He's an outside nigger and we don't put up with outside niggers in St. Augustine" (Goodwyn 1). Manucy's remarks about african americans and Martin Luther King Jr. himself are a good example of what the level of racism was like back in the time that Martin Luther King Jr. was a part of. Most white people of that time had the exact opposite beliefs as King, thinking that black and white people should not be equal because that is how it has always been.

     While studying this somber time period, it is easy to see the racial tension between black and the white people. MLK's introduction of the idea that the world is one house and that mankind consists of all brothers and sisters living within it is the only way to accomplish the goal of absolute peace. As the issue of race is becoming less and less prevalent in the world today, it is also becoming harder to fight because a lot of people are becoming more satisfied with their inferior position to other races due to the comfortable living conditions they have made for themselves.

