Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Flip Schulke (American, 1930–2008)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963
Gelatin silver print, date of print unknown, 11 x 14” (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

“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.”

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Eugene B. Sloan (American, 1922–1969)
Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Reel-to-reel audio recording
County Hall, Charleston, South Carolina, July 30, 1967

Today we share with you a recording of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made in Charleston's County Hall on July 30, 1967 (featured in our Black Self-Empowerment online exhibition). Dr. King spoke of racial injustice to a packed, mixed-race audience of over 2,500 people. Other than a short visual clip made by a local television station of the last three minutes, this is the only known full-length recording of Dr. King’s speech. Among others on the stage with Dr. 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. The recording was made by newspaper journalist Eugene B. Sloan, a reporter and photographer for The State, a local newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina.

Designer unknown
We Shall Overcome, Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968, c. 1968
Illustrated felt banner with mounted tassel, 18 1/4 x 12” (46.3 x 30.5 cm)