1964 Recording of MLK Discovered at University of Dayton

DAYTON — David Schock shed tears and felt prickles on the back of his neck as he heard the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on a long-forgotten recording from 1964 at the University of Dayton.

“I thought, ‘I’m standing on holy ground here,’” Schock said from his home in Grand Haven, Mich.

Schock discovered the unlabeled reel-to-reel tape of King’s speech at the UD Fieldhouse on Nov. 29, 1964, in a box of memorabilia owned by Herbert Woodward Martin of Washington Twp. Martin, a UD poet and professor emeritus, is the subject of a documentary film by Schock.

Martin, who never listened to the tape, assumed it was one that he had planned to record over. “Thank goodness I never did that,” he said.

The 50-minute recording captures the late civil rights leader discussing the state of race relations before an audience of more than 6,200 people. King told the crowd: “We’ve come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go.”

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