Rocky Mount celebrates 60-year anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s first delivery of the 'I Have A Dream' speech
Sixty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. publicly delivered the “I Have A Dream” speech for the first time ever in the gym at Booker T. Washington High School in Rocky Mount.
The city of Rocky Mount held an event inside the gym on Monday to commemorate the anniversary of the historic moment.
“So, my friends of Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight,” King said in the taped recording of the speech. “It is a dream rooted deeply in the American dream.”
The words that would inspire a nation at the height of the civil rights movement were born.
Nine months before King famously marched on Washington, D.C. to address millions of people on the National Mall, he was invited by Pastor Dudley of Mt. Zion Baptist Church to speak in Rocky Mount.
It was Nov. 27, 1962.
“It is recorded in history that Rocky Mount is now the site of a historical moment in our nation’s history,” Rocky Mount city council member Andre Knight said.
On Monday, the city of Rocky Mount held a celebration of the anniversary of King’s words, playing the speech over the loudspeakers in the same room where it was first delivered.
Among the speakers, those who were in the audience that night.
Herbert Tillman was a 17-year-old high school senior at the time. He told the crowd that King’s speech was a lightning rod for a community struggling under the yoke of segregation.
“We were actually really going through something, and we needed someone to give us a spark to pep us up, to make us feel that there was hope right here in Rocky Mount,” Tillman said.
Joyce Dickens was 15 when she heard those words, and they inspired her to pursue a lifetime of her own activism, spending the past 60 years fighting for racial equality and fair housing access in Rocky Mount.
“I have a dream,” Dickens said. “I’m 75 years old, I’ve been working since I was 15, and I still have the same dream.”
After the ceremony, the city unveiled a towering banner to commemorate the speech.
The man who discovered the only existing audio of the speech, Dr. Jason Miller, called the banner a fitting tribute for the place where an era-defining movement came to life.
“It is startling to think that of all the speeches in the world, Dr. King’s speech isn’t just the most recognizable one in American history, it’s actually the most recognizable speech in world history,” he said. “This banner reminds everyone that Rocky Mount, North Carolina is the birthplace of Dr. King’s dream.”
