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Life Magazine Martin Luther King Photos: New MLK Assassination Photos (Video)

Shallow Nation — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:53:38 +0000

Life Magazine Martin Luther King photos taken the night of his assassination, April 4, 1968 have been released publicly for the first time. Find out more and see video here.

The 13 photographs were taken by Life magazine photographer Henry Groskinsky. He and reporter Mike Silva were on assignment in Alabama and rushed to Memphis when news reached them that King had been shot.

The photographs had never been published nor seen publicly. They were released on the magazine’s Web site on April 3, 2009, one day ahead of the 41st anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr assassination. King had been in Memphis, supporting black sanitation workers who had been on strike. He delivered his famous speech, ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ the night before his assassination. Had he lived he would have turned 80 this year.

All of the photographs can be seen here on the Life Magazine Web site.

In contrast, the photos in this post are familiar photographs, in the public domain and preserved by the U.S. Library of Congress.

The MLK assassination photos chronicle unfolding events in the aftermath, showing his associates, including Andrew Young and the late Rev. Ralph David Abernathy Sr. together in solemnity in the slain Martin Luther King Jr’s motel room, standing on the balcony where he was killed. There is also a photograph of the inside of King’s suitcase, as he had left it; a can of shaving cream top of clothing and the book he had been reading, Strength to Love. Another photograph, chillingly reveals workers cleaning up the blood.

Martin Luther King, Jr. with medallion he received from NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner

Groskinsky was interviewed via phone at his home in Boca Raton, Florida and he said that he had he learned about a week ago that the Life Magazine Martin Luther King photos would be published on the magazine’s Web site. The 75-year-old Groskinsky does not own the rights to the photographs.

“It was a very sombre time and I felt like an intruder…I made only two or three snaps. I remember thinking this was a moment in history, that they were making decisions about how to go forward.”

Source: Newly released photos reveal aftermath of King’s assassination

According to The UK Guardian, the photographs were discovered when Life magazine partnered with Getty Images to place archival photographs online. Life.com editor Bill Shapiro is quoted as saying, “When I saw these plates my heart stopped because I knew what we had.”

In the interview, Groskinsky was asked about the MLK assassination photographs and why they were never published.

‘Once they got the famous photo’ of King’s associates pointing in the direction of the assassin, ‘that was it,’ Groskinsky said, referring to the widely circulated Associated Press photo.

He and Silva talked on the phone two days ago, trying to piece together the events of that tragic day.

“Neither one of us could remember anything after we left the room, where we stayed, what we did,” Groskinsky said.

The next day, they went back to the magazine’s New York offices.

“I turned in my film and went on to the next assignment,” Groskinsky said. “It was very disappointing they didn’t publish them, but in those days, we had no say.”

Source: Just-released photos show aftermath of MLK assassination

For more Martin Luther King Jr. pictures, see the Life Magazine archive on Google which contains 200 photos (including rare color photos from the 1963 March on Washington).

Photo source: United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The video is below.

Here is Life Magazine Martin Luther King photos video report, with a profile and interview with the photographer, Henry Groskinsky.

Video Link

Life Magazine Martin Luther King Photos: New MLK Assassination Photos (Video)

pics, pictures

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech Video, Text, Photos

Shallow Nation — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:42:40 +0000

Here is the video of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech” along with photos and transcript. King delivered the famous speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 at the March on Washington which drew 250,000 people in support of Civil Rights legislation and an end to segregation, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 brought about the end of slavery in the U.S. Video and text are after the jump.

In a recent book, King’s Dream UCLA professor Eric J. Sundquist, has examined the King speech in depth, and as Michael Kenney notes in a review….

Toward the end of the afternoon came King, already hailed as the soul of the civil rights movement, and a year later to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. King had a fine speech in hand, a masterpiece of oratory that called on themes from the Old Testament prophets to Abraham Lincoln. But just a paragraph from his prepared ending, King stopped in midsentence and paused.

As Eric J. Sundquist speculates in “King’s Dream,” it was as if King realized that something was missing, that, despite the continued shouts of approval, “he had not yet truly connected with his audience.” When King resumed, it was to utter, spontaneously, the memorable words: “I have a dream. . .” [...]

1963 March on Washington

As for that powerful “dream” imagery itself, Sundquist writes, “Dreams of freedom were omnipresent” for civil rights activists. King himself had used it earlier that summer at a Walk for Freedom in Detroit, and it could be found in the music of the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison, in the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, the civil rights pioneer who had died just the day before. [...]

In the book’s concluding chapter, “Not by the Color of Their Skin,” Sundquist explores the political interpretation of a key passage: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” “Those thirty-five spontaneous words,” Sundquist writes, have been crucial in “[framing] public discussion of affirmative action over the past four decades.” They have been used as such by Ronald Reagan, by supporters of California’s Proposition 209, which barred “preferential treatment,” and, perhaps most remarkably, by Clarence Thomas, before his appointment to the US Supreme Court, in arguing for an “equality of rights.”

Source: Exploring origins of ‘King’s Dream’ See also: King’s Dream – First chapter

Here is the full 17 minute I Have a Dream speech video.

YouTube Video Link

Here is the I Have a Dream speech text.

For more texts of King’s speeches, see: A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

For more Martin Luther King Jr. pictures, see the Life Magazine archive on Google which contains 200 photos (including rare color photos from the 1963 March on Washington)

King’s birthday is January 15, 1929. Had he lived he would have turned 80 this year. The Martin Luther King holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of January, which this year falls on January 19, just one day before the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the U.S., the nation’s first black president. Obama delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008, exactly 40 years to the day after King’s 1963 speech.

In 1994, Congress charged the Corporation for National and Community Service with transforming the King Holiday into a national day of service. This year, President-elect Obama is asking all Americans to serve on King Day and make an ongoing commitment throughout the year.(Source: MLKDay.gov)

Photo source: United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Lyndon B. Johnson

Martin Luther King Jr I Have a Dream Speech Video, Text, Photos