Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1962 speech at the Park Sheraton Hotel in 1962 is being heard again for the first time in decades,thanks to the New York State Museum, which released a copy of the newly-unearthed recording online today. The speech, delivered approximately one year before King's legendary "I Have A Dream" address, commemorated the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Dr. King's speech ponders the history of human rights in America, noting that "the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation had fallen far short of achieving equality for all of its citizens."
“The Proclamation of Inferiority has contended with the Proclamation of Emancipation, negating its liberating force," Dr. King declares in the impassioned 26 minute speech. The only way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, Dr. King argued, “is to make its declaration of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
The State Museum's presentation of the speech features a video that tracks along with a printed copy of the speech from the state archives, showing numerous handwritten editing marks made by Enoch Squires, the audio engineer who made the recording. The audio comes from a reel-to-reel magnetic tape that allowed for 65 minutes of recording time per side—Dr. King only spoke for 26 minutes, but several speakers preceded him, so about a minute of his speech is lost because Squires "had to manually flip each reel over, re-thread the tape through the tape head assembly and onto the takeup reel."
Here are a few events commemorating the great civil rights leader happening around NYC today.
