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

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 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

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 Jason Miller From Walter Magazine A disheveled manuscript titled The Bondwoman’s Narrative was listed only as “Lot 30: Unpublished Original Manuscript” when it appeared in a Swann Auction Galleries catalog in 2001. Written between 1853-1859, few people knew the hand-sewn pages pressed clumsily between two boards even existed. Barely meeting its retainer, the manuscript received only one bid. But The Bondwoman’s Narrative became a bestseller when it was published in 2002

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

By Alexandra Erdos From Researchgate.net Little is it known that Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 was inspired by “I Dream a World,” a poem written by Langston Hughes in 1941 and published in 1945. King’s famous speech echoes Hughes’ words and ideas from 20 years before, and almost exactly mirrors the way the two icons spoke, as if they were contemporaries. The new biography, as part of the Critical Lives series, aims to present critical figures o

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

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

From GLReview By Martha E Stone A physically attractive book, with heavy, glossy pages and some rarely seen black-and-white images Carl Van Vechten photo of Langston Hughes. Courtesy Beinecke Library, Yale. LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–1967), one of the best-known writers of the Harlem Renaissance, remains an endlessly fascinating, charismatic figure. He was born into a chaotic but well-educated and politically connected family, sometimes living with his mother or grandmother or fam

By Jason Miller From The Conversation A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, the inspiration behind Lorraine Hansberry’s play “ A Raisin in the Sun ” and an uncompromising voice for social justice, Langston Hughes is heralded as one of America’s greatest poets. It wasn’t always this way. During his career, Hughes was routinely harassed by his own government. And the nation’s literati, balking at his subversive politics, tended to overlook his work. Read More...

By Jason Miller From Literary Hub Canceling a 60-day tour through Russia that he was slated to lead, Langston Hughes left to cover the Spanish Civil War on June 30th, 1937. The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper sent him abroad to write “trench-coat prose” about black Americans volunteering in the International Brigades with articles being picked up by other news outlets such as Cleveland’s Call-post and Globe magazine. Hughes’s 22 articles covered an angle no one else in the

By Jason Miller From The Conversation In a 2019 article published in Standpoint Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David Garrow detailed new information about King he discovered in FBI documents. The most damaging is that King may have witnessed – and encouraged – a sexual assault at a Washington, D.C. hotel in January 1964. Some historians have cautioned against taking too much stock of Garrow’s findings; the FBI, after all, has a well-known

By Jason Miller From The Conversation David Garrow , the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., has unearthed information that may forever change King’s legacy. In an 8,000-word article published in the British periodical Standpoint Magazine on May 30, 2019, Garrow details the contents of FBI memos he discovered after spending weeks sifting through more than 54,000 documents located on the National Archive’s website . Initially sealed by court order unt

In a meticulous combination of close reading, biblical exegesis, and literary analysis, W. Jason Miller, in Origins of the Dream: Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric, offers an intriguing reinterpretation of Langston Hughes by demonstrating the influence Hughes's poetry exerted on the rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Miller focuses on the metaphor of the dream, which, in his formulation, derives principally from three of Hughes's poems: "Youth," "I Dream a World," and

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