The 1962 recording is slightly fuzzy. The microphone makes the voice inside the gym of Rocky Mount’s Booker T. Washington High School sound tinny. But the voice is familiar, and the words ring out clearly: “I have a dream.” On November 27, 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke that iconic phrase in Rocky Mount, a full nine months before it was immortalized at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. In a speech that was both sermon and civil rights address, King spoke to a crowd of 1,800 people, using several phrases and rhetorical devices that would become famous in his later speeches, including “Let freedom ring” and “How long? Not long.”
When King later made his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, some of the things he’d said in Rocky Mount had been moved around, and it was crafted to suit a larger audience, but the meaning behind the words and many of the words themselves were the same. In 2013, the original recording, a 1.5-millimeter acetate reel-to-reel tape, was found at Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount by NC State University English professor Dr. Jason Miller in the course of his research. Tape bent and reel cracked, the recording sat in a box humbly labeled in pencil: “Please do not erase.” It was carefully restored, and the historic speech was preserved for generations to come.
Listen to excerpts from the Rocky Mount speech and hear people describe how the address changed their city in this episode of Our State’s podcast, Away Message:
Flaky buttermilk drop biscuits, creamy potato and sausage casserole, and soul-warming chicken and cabbage soup were among your favorite recipes in January. Find out what else made the list.
For only three days each week, a former hosiery mill building in the foothills becomes a barbecue destination powered by a hardworking family.
When demand for tobacco and cotton diminished, this one-square-mile Halifax County town followed suit. Now, one couple is revitalizing Littleton into a lively location once more.
Each year, Our State celebrates the very best in North Carolina craftsmanship with the Made in NC Awards. Meet the talented artisans who won top honors in 2022 — and watch them at work.
