Why We Can't Wait (1964) is arguably the most vital book by one of the most important men in US history. Martin Luther King Jr. sets out the ideas that fuelled a large part of the 1960s civil rights movement. Having adopted Mahatma Gandhi's strategy of encouraging nonviolent civil disobedience, King used Why We Can't Wait to launch an impassioned call to African Americans, urging them to use the tactic to force the American government to abolish segregation and give black people equal rights. He also urged white Americans to recognize the evil of three hundred years of racism and turn their guilt into a love of all their neighbors.