The Eugene B. Sloan Civil Rights Collection

Tapes of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 Charleston speech

Tapes of Robert E. Scoggin's 1967 KKK speech

Tapes of Rev. Ralph David Abernathy’s 1969 speech

This newsletter highlights a recent addition to my social cause collection: several important, little-known reel-to-reel tape recordings made in South Carolina in the late 1960s by newspaper journalist Eugene B. Sloan. Documented on these tapes are three speeches that resonate today: South Carolina’s United Klans of America Grand Dragon, Robert E. Scoggin (1922-2003) speaking at a KKK rally in Charleston County, the night of July 29, 1967; Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) speaking in Charleston, the next day; and President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy (1926-1990) speaking during the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike on March 31, 1969.

Sloan’s press pass

The recordings were made by Eugene B. Sloan (1922-1969), a reporter and photographer for The State, a local newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. Sloan was a WWII veteran, author, and historian; known by colleagues for his high standards and great integrity.

(Left) Sloan’s tape recorder and camera
 

All photographs above from the Merrill C. Berman Collection
All photographs below by Eugene B. Sloan

Scoggin, KKK rally, Charleston County, July 29, 1967

On July 29, 1967, the night before King’s scheduled speech, South Carolina’s United Klans of America held a rally in Ravenel, South Carolina. It is unclear how Sloan was able to record this secret rally, but based on the audio’s muffled quality, Sloan’s family believes he may have disguised himself as a Klan member in order to gain access, and perhaps hid the none-too-compact tape recorder and camera under his robes. Scoggin’s toxic speech is filled with racist rhetoric as he calls for violence against King:

This “great” man Christian, Martin Luther [C**n]. […] Now this might be the last time Martin Luther [C**n] ever comes to Charleston. […] He come for the money. That’s what he come for and to sow his poisonous seeds. For God help that [n****r]. He ought to be shot!

 (Above) Top to bottom: cross burning, campaigning for George Wallace, and a German Shepherd at KKK rally, Charleston County, July 29, 1967
 

King, Charleston Airport, July 29, 1967

There is no known recording of King’s July 30, 1967 speech at Charleston's County Hall, other than a short visual clip made by a local television station of the last three minutes. Among others on the stage with King were Esau Jenkins (1910-1972), civil rights leader and founder of the Citizens' Committee of Charleston County, and James Clyburn (born 1940) then a young civil rights activist, now a longtime Congressman from South Carolina and the House Majority Whip. King spoke of racial injustice to a packed, mixed-race audience of over 2,500 people:

So we suffer from a kind of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The problem is, my friends, that we have learned to fly the air like birds and we have learned to swim the seas like fish and yet we haven’t learned to walk the earth like brothers and sisters. But the judgment of God is upon us now. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.
 

Abernathy, South Baptist Church, Charleston, March 31, 1969

Abernathy’s speech was delivered on March 31, 1969, at the South Baptist Church in Charleston, to over 1,500 workers and their supporters during the South Carolina Hospital Workers’ Strike, an important event in the state’s history which touched upon race, class, and gender. This is the only known recording of his speech:

There is a wind blowing with hurricane force that’s sweeping out an old order and bringing into being a new age. And a new negro who is standing tall with his shoulders back is singing a new song.
 

Sloan, c. 1967

All photographs by Eugene B. Sloan are courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.