The Internet Archive has an invaluable 1957 interview on the "New Negro" and the state of Civil Rights with Rev. Martin Luther King and Judge J. Waites Waring, the judge who played a key role in the Briggs v. Elliot case.
The discussion includes reflections on the impact of Brown v. Board of Education. The interviewer is Richard Heffner who is still interviewing notables all these years later.
In retrospect, one of the more compelling moments in the show is when Heffner asks whether the two men think the violent resistance to civil rights will continue.
Via Before Brown, Beyond Boundaries—another project of Professor Kim on behalf of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Most of my experience of Dr. King is in biographies and histories and in the recordings and texts of his speeches. This television appearance is a special opportunity to watch and listen to Dr. King speak less formally—though still with great eloquence. You get a rare glimpse of King the activist rather than King the iconographic orator. He's twenty-eight years old and his national fame is still somewhat new, on the heels of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Stream or download the video here.
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