Listen To A Freshly Unearthed 1962 Speech From Martin Luther King

1. An intern found the recording while staff were working on digitizing the museum’s collection.

2. The speech was recorded Sept. 12, 1962, at the Park-Sheraton Hotel in New York City.

3. King had another engagement that night, but was enticed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a dinner celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

He promised to donate money to rebuild black churches that had been destroyed by arson in Georgia.

4. In the speech, we hear him introduce themes he would later expand on the next year in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speeches.

The unresolved race question is a pathological infection in our social and political anatomy, which has sickened us throughout our history, and is still today a largely untreated disease.

5. A manuscript of the speech will be displayed at the state Museum starting in February.

Read more: http://buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/listen-to-a-freshly-unearthed-1962-speech-from-martin-luther

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