News & Media

By Ken Smith From WRAL News In celebration of Black History Month, a new documentary from an NC State professor explores the inspiration behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Through his research, Jason Miller found that King first uttered that historic refrain at a gym in Rocky Mount—nine months before the March on Washington. Read More...

By Damien Reed From The Technician The film “Origin of the Dream” was screened in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library Auditorium on Thursday, Jan. 22 as a part of MLK Commemoration Week, shedding light on North Carolina’s role in the Civil Rights Movement and the long-term impact Martin Luther King Jr. made on those that heard him speak. The film was created by Jason Miller, a distinguished professor, in collaboration with Emmy-award winning filmmaker Neal Hutcheson and featured ma

Source: PBS Documentary on Vimeo This hour-long documentary was researched by Jason Miller, and produced by Rebecca Cerese and Emmy Award-winner Neal Hutcheson. It traces King's first use of "I Have a Dream" in Rocky Mount, NC (November 27, 1962) and documents how Langston Hughes's poetry inspired King's dream metaphor. The documentary features Danny Glover, Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. William Barber II, David Garrow, and the final on-camera interview with Julian Bond. Surv

From The Learning Curve Podcast (Pioneer Institute) In this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day episode of The Learning Curve , co-hosts U-Ark Prof. Albert Cheng and Alisha Searcy of the Center for Public Schools speak with Dr. Lerone Martin , Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor at Stanford University, and Dr. Jason Miller , Distinguished Professor of English at North Carolina State University. They explore the religious, literary, and historical foundations of MLK’s thoug

By Tracey Peake From NC State University News Jason Miller joins us to talk about the full-length documentary he’s produced on the origin and evolution of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most famous speech. Most people associate King’s most famous refrain, “I have a dream,” with the speech he gave at the March on Washington in 1963. Miller’s documentary explores King’s first recorded usage of that phrase, which occurred in Rocky Mount, NC in 1962. Listen Here

By UF Press Martin Luther King, Jr. first spoke of “dreams” in a sermon he delivered on April 5, 1959. His subject that day was disappointment, not hope. The focus of his sermon came when he said: “Very few people are privileged to live life with all of their dreams realized and all of their hopes fulfilled. Who here this morning has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?” Though it doesn’t flash on first glance, King’s reference to unfulfilled and

By Lauren Kirkpatrik From NC State University News For years, Rocky Mount citizens have told tales about hearing the first rendition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. Before 1,800 people in a crammed high school gym, King talked about his “dream” and uttered other familiar passages in the fall of 1962. It was nine months before the March on Washington. More than 50 years later, an NC State English professor’s research is bringing that same speech back to li

By Sydney McCoy From Spectrum News 1 “I Have a Dream,” echoing with King’s powerful call for equality, remains one of history’s most acclaimed speeches, its message still resonating globally. While frequently studied in English classes and seen as a cornerstone of the civil rights movement, King’s speech debuted in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. W. Jason Miller, a distinguished professor in the English Department of N.C. State, shares something in common with King — a love of

From WKNC 88.1 Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Dr. Jason Miller is renowned for his research on, and discoveries about, Langston Hughes, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Nina Simone. Of particular note is his discovery of the first ever recording of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In this episode, Dr. Miller discusses his unconventional path to becoming a professor, his research, and his research process. I really enjoyed this conversation and gettin

From National Humanities Center Dr. King’s iconic refrain “I Have a Dream” was actually first delivered in Rocky Mount, NC, nine months before the March on Washington in 1963. By listening to this long lost reel-to-reel audio tape from November of 1962, we discover how this phrase actually has its origins in the poetry of Langston Hughes (1901–67). While Hughes was harassed by the FBI from as early as 1941, King’s every movement was traced, photographed, recorded, and even fi

By Ayn-Monique Klahre From Walter Magazine On July 31, 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University. A crowd of 4,000 — described by The News & Observer as“3,000 Negroes and 1,000 white persons” — gathered to hear him speak. King’s visit was sponsored by the Martin Luther King Forum, described by the paper as “a local ad hoc committee served by Romallus O. Murphy and the Rev. W. B. Lewis, as co-chairmen.” Ira Har

A Conversation with Jason Miller By Tony Bolden University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts and Sciences This interview presents Jason Miller’s research on the friendship between Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, who was known as the High Priestess of Soul. As a Hughes scholar, Miller combines his knowledge of Hughes with painstaking biographical research on Simone. In this way, he demonstrates how Hughes is connected to soul. Miller traces their friendship to Simone’s active

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By Michael Morand From Yale Beinecke Library echibit on Hughes and King “For years, Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes maintained a friendship,” Jason W. Miller of North Carolina State University noted in Smithsonian Magazine in 2018 . The Langston Hughes Papers are a great source about the relationship between Hughes and King and were a key source for Miller’s 2015 book, Origins of the Dream: Hughes’s Poetry and King’s Rhetoric . This temporary display showcase

By Matthew F. Delmont From Literary Hub Several years before the United States officially entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Black Americans were tracking the international spread of fascism closely. News relating to the Spanish Civil War, in particular, was especially captivating for them. In the pages of influential Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and the Baltimore Afro-American , prominent Black journalists opined on the significance of

From Smithsonian Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington is one of the most famous speeches in the world. But it almost didn't happen. If you look at the typed manuscript of his speech, you won't find the phrase "I Have a Dream." But even though Dr. King's speech was partially improvised, that doesn't mean that it wasn't years in the making. In this episode of Sidedoor, we trace the evolution of King's dream, from a secret friendsh

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By Chris Saunders From NC State Magazine It doesn’t take long talking to NC State English professor Jason Miller to understand that for him, everything begins and ends with 20th century American poet Langston Hughes. “I was drawn to Hughes’ accessibility,” Miller says of a leader of the Harlem Renaissance movement in the 1920s and ’30s. “Here is somebody with some profound thoughts that aren’t very nuanced or so ambiguous that they’re really hard to tease out.” Read More...

By Thomas Calder From Mountain XPress When a Raleigh-based audience gasped inside Quail Ridge Books, author W. Jason Miller realized he’d unintentionally discovered his next research topic, ultimately leading him to Western North Carolina. At the time, Miller, a professor of literature at N.C. State University, was celebrating the February 2020 release of his latest work, Langston Hughes , a biography written for the University of Chicago Press’ Critical Lives series. Read M