From The Conversation Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream – which alternated between shattered and hopeful – can be traced back to Hughes’ poetry. AP Photo For years, Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes maintained a friendship, exchanging letters and favors and even traveling to Nigeria together in 1960. In 1956, King recited Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” from the pulpit to honor his wife Coretta, who was celebrating her first Mother’s Day. That same year, Hughes wrote

By Nash Dunn From NC State University News Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches help form the foundation of his legacy. From “I have a dream” to “Fill up the jails,” his words are timeless. Echoing from old recordings and jumping off the page of the written record, King’s ideas and rhetoric pillared the civil rights movement, and they continue to inform and instruct leaders as they navigate current social challenges. They’re still used by teachers to educate students — still use

From NC State University News By Nash Dunn Months before delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke the famous refrain in a small town in North Carolina. For years, Rocky Mount citizens have told tales about hearing the first rendition of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. On Nov. 27, 1962, nine months before the refrain echoed across the National Mall during the March on Washington, the words r

By Sam Stringer, Ben Brumfield From CNN Little else stirred the American soul in the 20th century like four short words cried out across the National Mall in Washington on August 28, 1963 – “I have a dream.” Before Dr. Martin Luther King’s words echoed throughout Lincoln Memorial, he raised goose bumps inside a segregated school gym in North Carolina. And just like in Washington, the refrain “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” prompted roars

By Tim Peeler From NC State University News In his new book Origins of the Dream , NC State English professor Jason Miller makes a tangible connection between the long suspected but never proven link between the poetry of Harlem Renaissance hero Langston Hughes and the prose of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. This is Miller’s second book on the poetry of Hughes. His first, Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture , was published in 2011. Miller, a former colle