Thanks to the chief archivist at WNYC, New York Public Radio, a previously unreleased audio recording of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been unearthed just days before the national holiday in his honor.
Andrea Mitchell Reports aired a portion of the Rev. King’s interview with Eleanor Fischer in Atlanta. She was producing a documentary series on Dr. King and that southern city for the CBC called Project 62. She spoke to him again in late 1966 and early 1967.
The station describes it in this way: “Fischer’s raw interviews were given to the New York Public Radio Archives by her estate after she died in 2008 at the age of 73. As far as we know, these unedited interviews have never been presented in their entirety until now. “
In the interview, the 32-year-old civil rights leader described how at the age of five, he first became conscious of racism and how his own mother tried to instill a sense of pride over inferiority in those difficult times.
The entire set of interviews is now posted at wnyc.org.
Alice Rhee