The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) and Syracuse University announce The King Center Audio and Visual Digitization Project, a collaboration that will ensure that the slain civil rights leader’s legacy will be preserved for generations to come. Working with the Atlanta-based King Center, SU will preserve and digitize some 3,500 hours of audio and video footage of King.
I am pleased to announce that The King Center has joined with Syracuse University for The King Center Audio and Visual Digitization Project, says Martin Luther King III, president and CEO of the center. This endeavor will enable people to see and hear my father deliver his message as he did more than 50 years ago, and preserve it for generations to come. With the generous support and encouragement of my dear friends Sam and Carol Nappi, and the technical expertise of the University, we are continuing to fulfill the mission of The King Center as the official living memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and ensuring that his work toward freedom, justice and equality is as relevant today as ever.
The King Center archive is the largest repository of primary source material on King and America’s civil rights movement in the world. Its collections include footage that few, including some members of the King family, have ever seen or heard. The center houses a number of unique holdings, like raw footage from various productions over the years. A 16 mm film of King speaking in Syracuse in July 1961 was also discovered. The speech explores many of the themes that would emerge in his landmark 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. The film at The King Center appears to be the only extant copy. There are also a large number of unlabeled reels and canisters that may contain undiscovered footage.