Describing the Dream: Studying Martin Luther King Jr. at NC State
- Jan 15, 2019
- 1 min read
By Alastair Hadden
This week and next, NC State will celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with events across campus — including service days, an award-winning virtual reality experience and a commemoration speech from Symone Sanders, political analyst and former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
Those events represent the continuation of years of research and exploration at NC State into the civil rights leader’s legacy and rhetoric, and his ties to North Carolina. Efforts include the Virtual MLK Project, which uses advanced digital and audio technology to recreate King’s “Fill Up the Jails” speech, delivered in Durham, N.C., in 1960; and the discovery by Jason Miller, a professor in the Department of English, of a lost audio recording of King’s address to a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount, N.C., in 1962. The latter speech prefigures King’s most famous words: “I have a dream.”
