King speech rediscovered by teacher

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

A 1967 speech given by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is getting new attention after a reel-to-reel recording of it was found in a pile of items intended for discard at an Ohio high school library.

The Plain Dealer newspaper reports King made the speech at Glenville High School in Cleveland after being invited by a group of black ministers a year after riots had hit a city neighborhood.

In the speech, King tells students that education and career opportunities were just beginning for black Americans and reinforces his message of working for change without violence.

“Our power does not lie in Molotov cocktails. ... Our power lies in our ability to say nonviolently that we aren’t gonna take it any longer,” he says.

The tape was uncovered by Glenville art teacher Jayne Sylvester and student L.A. Littlejohn in 2010 as they searched through castoffs looking for items for an art project. It was in a slim box, marked as a tape of King at Glenville High School.

The speech, since transferred to CD at Case Western Reserve University, will be used in social studies lessons at Cleveland schools and as part of Glenville’s black history program next month.

“It’s like a lost treasure. It will be absolutely wonderful for the kids to hear,” Glenville principal Doris Redic tells The Plain Dealer.

The tape is not the only recording of the speech that has survived.

Voter advocate Pearl Livingstone, a retired teacher who worked in nearby Brecksville, had an audiotaped copy given to her in 1967 by a neighbor who was a Glenville administrator. She said she had it made into a CD in 2009 and has passed copies along to Cleveland teachers who register 18-year-olds at their schools through her voter-registration group.

“It’s such an inspiring speech. When I listen to it now, I get chills,” said Livingstone, who had played the speech on a reel-to-reel player for students when she was a teacher.

John Basalla, audiovisual archivist for the Cleveland School District, said he doesn’t know how the tape found at Glenville ended up in the trash.

“I can’t speak to how it got to wherever it got because I wasn’t there,” he said.

“All I would say is it’s a surprising find, and I’m glad it’s preserved.”

Littlejohn, now a student at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania, said King’s words were powerful and showed how the 1960s were different form today.

King refers to segregation in the speech, at one point saying that he had to sit in the back of a Georgia school bus as a boy, but always left his mind on the front seat.

“And I said to myself, ‘One of these days, I’m going to put my body up there where my mind is,”’ King said.