Early recording of MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech released

It proved fortunate for King that he had practiced the dream part of his speech in Rocky Mount and later in Detroit, because it wasn’t part of his typewritten speech in Washington.

Little else stirred the American soul in the 20th century like four short words cried out across the National Mall in Washington on August 28, 1963 – “I have a dream”.

A historian’s work on the link between Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work and the work of Langston Hughes helped unearth a major find: the earliest recorded version of King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, captured nine months before he delivered it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Miller shared the recording with the world for the first time Tuesday at North Carolina State University. Miller said it is the first documented moment King speaks the refrain from his “I Have a Dream” speech. “I have a dream tonight”, he said.

“All of a sudden, Martin Luther King comes on stage”. Herbert Tillman, who was a senior at the Rocky Mount high school where the speech was given, was present during the address and shared what it was like to have Dr. King visit the town during that era.

Tolokun Omokunde, now the pastor of Timothy Darling Presbyterian Church in Oxford, recalled being an unruly teen student, forced by his grandmother to rake his teacher’s yard after saying the mild expletive “Shoot” in frustration. Miller said the full audio of the speech will be available through a website being developed called kingsfirstdream.com. “It’s a 1.5mm acetate reel-to-reel tape that was sitting there not being played and nobody knew the contents of it”, he said.

And 50 years from now, said Cash Michaels, editor of The Carolinian newspaper, recordings of Tuesday’s event better not be hidden in a library drawer. “Now for the first time, this historic speech can be heard”.

As the small crowd left the Hunt library on Tuesday, speakers hoped the Rocky Mount speech would give North Carolina greater due as the host of civil rights history.

He sent emails and made calls until he eventually heard back in the fall of 2013 from the Braswell Public Library in Rocky Mount, where staff said a box with the recording had mysteriously appeared on a desk one day. King then improvised, and lit up the audience with phrases very similar to those he had delivered in that gymnasium.