What they're saying ...
“I remember my dad showing me the film footage, and I know he felt it was important to put the Klan footage into the wider context of Dr. King’s visit. We both felt that he’d captured events that were historically significant. It bolstered my belief in racial equality.”
Marshall Wyatt, Raleigh resident, son of Edgar Wyatt, the man who filmed the 1966 KKK march, as quoted in WALTER Magazine
In July 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to 5,000 people in NC State University's Reynolds Coliseum. In anticipation of his visit, hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members marched through downtown Raleigh in full regalia. Following years of research into this overlooked history, Jason Miller, professor of English at NC State, found 81 seconds of color footage of the Klan march — and 17 precious seconds of King speaking at Reynolds.
With the dedicated help of fourth-year Ph.D. candidate Margaret E. Baker, a filmmaker and digital specialist whose research focuses on race relations in the rural South, that footage was turned into a 10-minute immersive experience that will debut at D.H. Hill Jr. Library on Wednesday, Jan. 17, from 6 to 7 p.m., a capstone for the university’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
