(crowd noise) I too dream a world I dream a world where man, no other man will scorn, Where love will bless the earth and peace its paths adorn.

I dream a world where all will know sweet freedom's way.

Where greed no longer saps the soul nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where Black or White whatever race you be will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free.

- [Martin Luther King] Brothers and sisters, I have a dream one day right here in Rocky Mount, North Carolina sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will meet at the table of brotherhood knowing that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of Earth.

I have a dream.

(slow music) - Four little words that moved a nation I have a dream.

Well months before Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

delivered those iconic words there on the National Mall in Washington he rehearsed his speech in front of a small group inside of a high school gym in North Carolina and that never before heard audio just released.

- A never before heard audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.

has been discovered in North Carolina.

- [Newscaster] North Carolina's News & Observer reports on a newly discovered recording of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

's - [Newscaster] Historians have released a new audio version of Dr.

King's I Have a Dream speech It was given a year before the March on Washington at a high school gym in North Carolina - [Newscaster] A historian's work on the link between Martin Luther King Jr.

's work and the work of Langston Hughes helped unearth a major find: the earliest recorded version of King's iconic I Have a Dream speech - It's one of the most well known speeches in US history and a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

- I have a dream.

(slow music) (train whistle blowing) - The Rocky Mount of my youth or the Edgecombe County of my youth was a segregated community.

Rocky Mount is divided by the county line down Main Street, the railroad track is the dividing line.

I call it the line of apartheid.

Edgecombe County is predominantly African American, Nash County's predominantly White.

Majority commercial development on the Nash County side, very little commercial development on the Edgecombe County side.

- Rocky Mount at that time was a regular small town segregated area.

The schools were segregated.

The stores were segregated.

The restaurants were segregated.

It was a segregated area.

(slow music) - I remember going to the place in Rocky Mount to eat and when I went in there and they told me, Said, “We don't serve your kind in here."

Said, "If you want something though, what we'll do is if you take and go in the back, back there where the trash can at, we'll take and fix you a plate and I'll fix you a plate and you can eat it off the trash can lid.

(slow music) And yes, we had the White and Colored water fountains just like everybody else did.

- I guess for a lot of people it made you feel "less-than."

I remember going to Harlem school and Polk school and other schools and there was not a place for you to put your name in the book 'cause it'd had already been through the White system and all the slots were filled or pages were torn out.

- Schools, houses, where you lived, what you did, everything - was the norm that we know of in the segregated world at that time.

Then, this person came to town, Dr.

Martin Luther King.

- When I read the news that he was actually coming to Rocky Mount, I mean this was little, tiny town, Rocky Mount, North Carolina I was just in awe and it was one of those things I just had to see.

I had to make sure that I was there.

- His work was growing and expanding and so you knew of what was happening in your community.

When you went to church there were discussions about what was happening in this evolving Civil Rights Movement and so, and then we were encouraged to participate.

To come and to hear him speak.

It drew the Black community in to strengthen us and give us hope.

(slow music) - The story of Dr.

King and Rocky Mount is one I've been so fortunate to learn from other experts.

A pastor named George Dudley tried to get his childhood friend, Martin Luther King to come visit.

Finally, in 1962 Dr.

King says I will come and I will support your growing movement.

It was called the Rocky Mount Voters and Improvement Association, because you're trying to get people to register to vote.

Because you're trying to better your city.

What was it like in 1962?

Well, when Dr.

King flies into the Raleigh Durham airport he's picked up in a hearse owned by the C.C.

Stokes Funeral Home.

They take him in that clandestine fashion all the way back to Rocky Mount because they need to keep his whereabouts secret.

White supremacy is alive and well today and it was alive and well in 1962.

Dr.

King's meal before he speaks that night happens at George Dudley's house and I got to speak to the amazing Helen Gay, the first Black city council woman in the history of North Carolina She was a caterer at the time and she served the meal and here's what we learned.

When she brought the meal over to George Dudley's house she had a set code to use on the phone to let others know they could come join.

So, she picked up the phone and when the meal was there and Dr.

King had arrived she told her friend Martha Stith and Reverend Jim Costin, the blackberry pie is ready.

That was the code that it was safe to come over because they didn't want to say the name because they knew people were listening in on the phone lines.

So, you come in a hearse, you hide what's going on by these phone lines and then the most dramatic moment of all is one morning when Dr.

King is at George Dudley's house we find that very, very early a strange car shows up outside the house.

It's so early in the morning that George Dudley's wife goes out on the porch and she's standing there.

She has the double barrels of a gun breached across her left arm and in the pockets of her nightgown, they're filled with shotgun shells.

She is ready to defend Dr.

King from anything that might be coming.

So, that was the atmosphere of the time in the surrounding moments.

- Martin Luther King was coming to Booker T. Washington High School.

I said, well I was very excited but something else began to happ My grandfather had passed and my uncle Charles Stith bought me a suit that day, a blue suit.

Showed me how to tie a Windsor knot with a white shirt, put a handkerchief in my pocket.

My grandmother washed, starched, and ironed my underwear.

Something really big must be going on.

And I had Buster Brown shoes, not knockoffs, the parrot was on Buster Brown's shoulder which meant they were real and then Miss Hawkins came smelling very good and all dressed up and Brenda Armstrong with all her patent leather and her skirts came.

And Miss Hawkins said, "Young man, you shall remember this always and you have done an excellent job in World History and this is your reward."

And she opens the door and Dr.

Martin Luther King is sitting in the library having coffee and we had an hour with him prior to his speech at Booker T. And I began to ask him 1001 questions.

Dr.

King, why would you really follow Mahatma Gandhi?

He began to tell me about non-violence and he told me that non-violence is stronger than violence.

The easy route he said was to be violent, I said some days I want the easy route then but when I left I knew I was gonna follow King.

- [Martin Luther King] I have a dream... - Such a joy to be here.

I can remember coming in and everything was just filled with people.

People everywhere.

Where everybody was just excited and they was waiting for Martin Luther King to come on.

- There was a crowd.

It was so full when I got in until I had to stand.

So, I stood for the entire time.

- The gym was full, the atmosphere was excited and full of expectation.

- And they came on the stage like one behind the other but once they opened the stage up and start to see the people march everybody stood to their feet in jubilation.

- [Martin Luther King] If we're going to break down the barriers of segregation, we must continue to register and vote in large numbers.

But I am convinced that one of the most significant steps that the Negro can take at this hour is that short walk to the voting It can change conditions.

- I was already aware of all the things that was going on around the whole country as far as all the marches and everything else and seeing Martin Luther King on the stage on TV and everywhere but what I really come away with was he's trying to do something for us.

Our people.

He's trying to do something to bring everybody together and it wasn't that he was trying to separate people with his speech as far as I'm just for you Black people.

When listening to him, his message was I want to bring all people together, Black, White, green, purple, polka dot, don't care who you are, what part of the country you come from, I want to be able to bring everybody together and we can live together on one accord.

No more White and Colored water fountain.

No more you can't go here and you can't go there but everybody, no matter where you're from could just come together and be a part of this United States of America where we can all come and share in the same dream regardless of race, creed, or color as he used to say.

We can all be one, united in the United States of America.

- [Martin Luther King] How long, somebody's asking, will justice be crucified?

And truth be buried?

How long do we have to struggle in order to get those rights which are basic, God-given rights deep down in the constitution of this nation?

- The speech itself to me was amazing.

He had a command of the language and he had a command of the spirit that went with the language.

Words have power.

Words have power and words have spirit.

And he chose the Holy Spirit to be in his words.

He chose the spirit that you cannot deny that people need justice.

- It is said that Jeremiah looked around him and he noticed all of the inequalities of life.

He noticed the wicked people prospering and the good people languishing and he cried out, is there no balm in Gilead?

- I too sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes but I laugh and eat well and grow strong.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the table when company comes.

Nobody will dare say, eat in the kitchen then besides they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed.

I too sing America.

Dr.

King was always centered around justice.

There's something that allows us to, in his thinking that allows us to go beyond our own selfish needs, our own selfish projections about how we see the world or whatever.

There's somewhere in always that inclusive of not only African Americans and this is one of the difficult but humanity itself.

- [Martin Luther King] ...and that is that there is a checkpoint in the universe, that evil may occupy the throne for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the powerful forces of justice and goodness.

- I think what happened to me that night was I joined a movement as a child.

You know, in my mindset, in my determination in knowing that I could be anything that I wanted to be and so it continued to evolve.

I followed Dr.

King's pathway in saying that, if you give of yourself and dedicate yourself to whatever you can do in your community, I can do anything.

He had a unique voice and he had a unique power and that power as I said, built movement.

(crowd cheering) - [Martin Luther King] I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream.

(crowd cheering) - Now, when I heard the one from Washington D.C.

some of us were saying, that's the one that he stated in Rocky Mount and you know, things can change.

Dr.

King was a visionary even then that we didn't realize how much of a visionary he was.

- Glad to know you are a registered voter, you know?

- Yeah.

- Okay, is there anyone in your family who's not a registered voter?

- The focus on the right to vote to be able to put persons where they will do the most good for all people comes from his vision.

- I got involved with voter registration, voter education.

Got introduced to community economic development and learned from that that there was a way for us to not just sit and look at our neighborhoods decline but we have the power to plan and we built the capacity to build neighborhoods and so I see all of that as the outcome of Dr.

King's teaching.

That what he said to me is, in my mindset and I kept it and it's continued to evolve, you can change your own community.

That's what I heard him say and in that dream we can make them reality if we come together, unify, work invest our time and talent, we can make it better for ourselves.

- Dr.

King's dream is the American dream.

Dr.

King is a latter day patriot Patriot is a word that's been expropriated by people who can't stand Martin Luther King but I think that the patriotism exists, exists through the vision, the dream of Martin Luther King.

(upbeat music) - The idea of the American dream does not just define the American Civil Rights Movement.

It really defines America.

America was a dream.

A dream of religious freedom and also a dream of mutual respect and appreciation.

That was all the Civil Rights Movement was about and while we talked about jobs and freedom it would have been more accurate to follow Aretha Franklin and say, it was really about respect.

It called on America to create a policy of respect.

(upbeat music) - When I think about King and the dream I'm not so much thinking about the American dream, I'm thinking about him thinking about a better place, a better way, a better world that he could be in or that he could create than the world we're in now.

- I think that all African Americans in the United States had that dream that one day we would be accepted, not by the color of our skin but the content of our character So, it was a common dream.

I think that that's really the nerve that he hit.

Just from his language and his strength he showed a pathway of how we can get there.

He preached that I Have a Dream but he was also preaching, this is gonna be a reality.

- [Martin Luther King] I have a dream tonight.

One day every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be laid low.

We will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

- When he came out with the dream sequence he was actually addressing White people and the congress and the president because it was a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

It so completely identified our movement with the founding fathers of the constitution that it just made a lie of all of the accusations of us being communists and the kinds of malicious rumors that were being spread trying to undercut our movement.

- [Martin Luther King] This will be the day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My Country 'tis of Thee."

- [Crowd] Yes.

- [Martin Luther King] Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride from every mountainside let freedom ring and if America is to be a great nation this must become true.

- The speech in August of 1963, the I Have a Dream speech, when John Kennedy saw the speech he was aghast.

He was breathless, he couldn't believe that you had this power in this black community because he was a rich boy from Boston and he had no real first-hand experience or exposure to black people.

So, he was amazed.

The president of the United States was amazed at the level of eloquence, of insight, of wisdom that existed in this scorned community as expressed through Martin Luther King and I'm sure that was a reflection of how the wider American public saw that.

So, it was a big day in American history.

(crowd cheering) - [Martin Luther King] My friends in Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight.

It is a dream rooted deeply in the American dream.

- So, that was recorded in 1962.

Somebody found that tape in a box at a library in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

It was labeled MLK and the words said, please do not erase.

- [Newscaster] The audio recording is the entire speech King delivered in Rocky Mount on November 27th, 1962.

- It's a 1.5 millimeter acetate reel to reel tape that was sitting there not being played and nobody knew the contents of.

- Audio of the speech recently unearthed by local historians was released to the world.

- Those words in that small high school gym were the first steps toward a speech that would go down in history but his dream remains unfulfilled.

- Uh, what do you make of all of this?

- Well, the thing that's most exciting for me as a scholar is, this is not only a new tape.

It's not only the first documented time you have I Have a Dream, this was actually a key piece of evidence in documenting and confirming Langston Hughes's own belief that Dr.

King's dreams were related to his poetry.

So, Dr.

King had long been fascinated and quoted Hughes's poems from memory and so the development at this stage is him revisiting one more time how to combine and interrelate, in his own language, prophecy, the American dream, and the dream poetry of Langston Hughes.

- Dream Deferred, one of my favorites from my Harlem Renaissance studies.

Makes me think of "Raisin in the Sun."

Professor Jason Miller, thank you so much, incredible find.

(slow music) - Dr.

King started memorizing Langston Hughes's poems when he was in 7th grade.

His teacher was a woman named Miss Elizabeth Lemon and she recalled Martin Luther King actually having this poem about black dancers that he would recite and because it had moves like the Charleston in it, King would actually perform the dances while he recited the poems from memory and so he was in love with Langston Hughes from a very early age.

The most fascinating turn then happens in 1956, Coretta Scott King is pregnant and then she gives birth to their first son and so for the first Mother's Day she enjoys he recites the Langston Hughes poem, “Mother to Son” to her and Langston Hughes was her favorite poet who she met when she was 14 years old, had every copy of every book and so that then turned the personal love Dr.

King had for Langston Hughes into the professional persona in which he started using Hughes's poetry over and over again.

- And with a powerful commitment I believe that we can transform dark yesterdays of injustice into bright tomorrows of justice and humanity.

Let us keep going toward the goal of selfhood, to the realization of the dream of brotherhood, and toward the realization of the dream of understanding good will.

Let nobody stop us.

I close by quoting once more the man that the young lady quoted, that magnificent Black bard who is now passed on.

Langston Hughes, one day he wrote a poem entitled “Mother to Son” and the mother didn't always have her grammar right but she uttered words of great symbolic profundity.

Well son, I'll tell you, life for me ain't been no crystal stair, it's had tacks in it.

Boards torn up.

Places with no carpet on the floor, bare but all the time I's been a-climbing on and reaching landings and turning corners and sometimes going in the dark where there ain't been no light.

So boy, don't you stop now.

Don't you sit down on the steps 'cause you finds this kinda hard For I's still going, boy.

I's still climbing and life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Well life for none of us has been a crystal stair.

- [Scholar] November 30th, 1959, Dear Mr.

Hughes, this will be a somewhat unusual request.

A. Philip Randolph celebrated his 70th birthday this year.

Would you feel that you might write and present a poem in honor of Mr.

Randolph for the occasion?

To add a personal note, my admiration for your works is not only expressed in my personal conversations but I can no longer count the number of times and places all over the nation in my addresses and sermons in which I have read your poems.

I know of no better way to express in beauty the heartbeat and struggle of our people.

With warmest personal regards, very sincerely, Martin Luther King Jr.

- I think it's very, very easy to connect Martin Luther King and the poet Langston Hughes and think of them as people going in the same direction.

Both men are pushing as hard as they can for a different world, a better world.

- You cannot leave Booker T. Washington senior high school without knowing about Langston Hughes 'cause life for many of us hadn't been no crystal stair.

Had tacks in it and places bare and boards torn up but yet and still we survived.

(crowd voices) - I have often wondered about the connection between Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

's I Have a Dream speech, probably his most iconic speech, probably his most often quoted speech, I wondered about that and some of the works and words of Langston Hughes who clearly predated Martin Luther King and published earlier than Martin Luther King.

Most people turn to Hughes's poem, “I Dream a World.” - [Danny Glover] A world I dream where Black or White, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free.

Where wretchedness will hang its head and joy like a pearl attends the needs of all mankind.

Of such, I dream, my world.

Of such, I dream, your world.

Of such, I dream, our world.

(slow gospel music) - This business of dreaming traces all the way back to the prophets.

The prophets in the Bible had three tasks.

One task was to examine and critique what was going on in society.

The second task was to condemn what was going on as far as injustice was concerned and then to say what the penalties would be, what would happen to the nation.

But then always they had to present a kind of subversive hope, a dream if you will.

Dr.

King stands in that tradition.

Some say he first heard the echoes of this dream from Langston Hughes's poem, America, Will be America but we're so thankful that right here in Rocky Mount, before ever getting to Washington D.C., Dr.

King taught us, you'll hear him give a critique and what's gonna happen but then you'll hear him engage in subversive hope where he talks about the dream.

I think that some of the ways that Langston Hughes had written about his dreams for an America to be America again, that Dr.

King riffed off of that using a nice jazz phrase.

And was able to turn that into his own iconic statement.

- [Danny Glover] Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain seeking a home where he is free.

America was never America to me.

- Well, I think Langston, what he was doing, he had his finger on the pulse of the African American community.

He was the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance.

I mean, there were other poets but there was something about him.

He was doing it all.

He was a forerunner, blues, jazz, poet, activist.

He was a forerunner and he had gone out beyond and there was just something about his ability to talk to the everyday person.

- Langston Hughes loved Blacknes He loved Black people.

He loved Negritude.

There's a reservoir of deep beauty here.

Langston was the person, through his person before his art who saw the beauty of Blackness.

Black is Beautiful came from Langston Hughes before the slogan arose.

- I read My People, the night is beautiful so the faces of my people.

When I realized this poem was written in 1926 I was flabbergasted.

I had no idea that any African American could say such positive things.

Even using the word Black in 1926.

(upbeat music) Langston Hughes is able to communicate with all levels of people.

He can talk to the college educated but he can talk to average people who've had very little formal education and never insult them.

It's never talking down to them.

- For me, when his poems resonated they resonated on a every day level but not to diminish, but to highlight what was going on in the streets, in our home, and with our colloquial speech and so I think that is why Langston was doing something that just captured what was in our hearts and our minds and our souls.

(upbeat music) Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was a poet himself.

Just the way he spoke and the way he thought and the way he felt but of course he leaned to the poets because the poet lives in a world, an interior world.

And what Langston was able to do was to take the interior world and the everyday world and connect it.

- [Danny Glover] I am the darker brother, they... send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh and eat well and grow strong.

Tomorrow I'll be at the table when company comes.

Nobody will dare say, eat in the kitchen then.

Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed.

- Langston Hughes I think, was very much the people's poet.

I don't mean that he wrote people's poetry in the sense that this was poetry for people who were not well-educated or so on, but it did mean that he was the kind of person who wrote poetry that anybody could read.

Anybody could recite and everybody could love.

- I think poetry was an enduring medium for Hughes who wrote in almost every conceivable genre.

I think the poetry was such a good medium for Langston Hughes because of the musical connection that he maintained.

(slow guitar music) He cared about the musical forms that he heard.

He loved Black people and he wanted to express things in ways that were drawn from the cultural ambiance of Black life.

(upbeat music) Langston Hughes's poetry is also appealing because of the contents and the themes and certainly one of the prevailing themes centers on the dream.

- Many of us dreamed.

We were dreamers because we had to dream past the reality that we were in as African American folk in America.

We had to dream past the reality of Jim Crow and we knew that at some time that dream would be deferred.

Sometimes that dream would turn to chaos.

(everyone yelling) - [Danny Glover] What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Or maybe it just sags like a heavy load or does it explode?

(upbeat music) (everyone yelling) - [Newscaster] Explosive demonstrations rock the North as well as the South as Negros struggle for equal opportunities.

- If we are going to investigate the ways that Langston Hughes discusses the dream we must look at his 1951 volume, Montage of a Dream Deferred.

That volume has dream in it's title but more importantly it really is a montage of the variety of dreams that people in Harlem had around the late 1940s.

One of the poems is called, "Deferred" and in that poem the speakers talk about things as simple as owning a television set, owning a good radio, getting a drink of gin, going to take the civil service exam, having two new suits at once.

These are some of the dreams.

We're not just talking about, I dream of becoming a Supreme Court Justice, it wasn't something grand and unachievable for most of us but for some of these residents in Harlem these were not readily achievable dreams.

They were often deferred dreams.

Thus, many of the works of Hughes, his poems tend to talk about holding fast to dreams.

Not letting go of dreams and even his poem, one of the climactic poems in Montage of a Dream Deferred called "Harlem," although most people don't know that proper title, what happens to a dream deferred?

It was important I think, for Hughes to convey to his readers, particularly the readers not in Harlem that if you keep frustrating people year after year, sometimes they're not just gonna take it like a heavy load.

Hughes wanted people to understand that.

To reach out, to say help people achieve their dreams.

- You know, Langston really was working in that area of dreams which, what poets do - the little dream and the metaphorical dream.

Because that's the job of the poet.

To speak the truth.

(slow music) - I think Hughes was really brave when he had nothing to gain from it.

I think he just was very much a truth speaker and that he said what he felt needed to be said so I think that was an important role that he served for us as someone who would say things regardless of the consequences.

(slow music) - Dr.

King used to say that in order to be a free man you had to overcome the love of money and the fear of death.

I think when we went to Birmingham we went with no illusions.

In fact, Dr.

King laughed and joked about some of us are not gonna make it back.

But that was at the idea of our own deaths.

We never thought of the death of innocent children as growing out of our protests and I think it was because we were unprepared for them to bomb a Sunday school you know at 9:30 in the morning and kill four beautiful, wonderful little girls, that was devastating.

I think it's one thing to die yourself and not be afraid of death but it's another to see life deprived of such innocent, wonderful young people and I think that was one of the more devastating moments in his life.

(slow music) - When those four little girls were bombed that was right after we in August, in August we have a dream, we feeling good, we marching on Washington and in September someone teaches you that there are nightmares in the midst of your dreams and so King kept us dreaming.

- The prominence and fame of Martin Luther King's optimistic I Have a Dream message at the March on Washington should not overshadow or obscure how the Martin Luther King of 1966 through 1968 was someone who identified as a democratic socialist, spoke out very powerfully about the extent and the danger of economic inequality in America, and spoke out very critically about American militarism and war-making particularly in Southeast Asia.

The Martin Luther King who people should remember, the Martin Luther King who wanted to be remembered is a Martin Luther King who is a challenging, critical outspoken voice.

Not someone who's celebratory or reassuring.

- So, just as I say we aren't gonna let any dogs or water hoses turn us around we aren't gonna let any injunction turn us around.

(crowd cheering) Well, I don't know what will happen now.

We've got some difficult days ahead but it doesn't really matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop.

(crowd cheering) And I don't mind.

Like anybody I would like to live a long life, longevity has it's place but I'm not concerned about that now.

I just wanna do God's will.

- As we look at Langston Hughes and really as we think about Martin Luther King I think the issue of warfare has to be considered because both of them were willing to tackle that issue when it was not necessarily the popular position to take.

- [Langston Hughes] If there's a question period and I'm glad there isn't one because in question periods people usually ask very pointed and factual kinds of questions.

They will ask you for example, what do you think about the Viet Cong?

You know?

Well, all I can say about the Viet Cong is that anybody, I don't see how anybody in their right minds would wanna be captives of the Americans.

Because we have been captives for 300 years.

(slow music) - [Martin Luther King] For those who ask the question, aren't you a civil rights leader And thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace I have this further answer.

In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference we chose as our motto, To Save the Soul of America.

We were convinced we could not limit our vision to certain rights for Black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of slaves were loosed completely.

- Dr.

King, towards the end of his life had moved away from purely civil rights work and he got into the issues of poverty and war and without knowing it, it was amazing how much of the work of Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King converged - [Martin Luther King] In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that Black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier, Oh yes, I say it plain.

America never was America for me and yet I swear this oath, America will be.

- I remember a story that I heard once where he was confronting Whitney Young and Whitney says, Martin, have you lost your mind talking about Vietnam?

You know, what are we gonna do about our budgets we're getting from Lyndon Johnson?

You know, these are the people who are supporting us and here you are condemning the war in Vietnam.

Martin's reply, he said, “You know, you can violate the terms of your conscience and you might get a grant from Lyndon Johnson but you will not get into the kingdom of heaven.” - Dr.

King said any country where militarism and the war machine determines everything, its budgets, its agenda, is headed towards spiritual and physical death and so we have to challenge that and we're challenging the distorted moral narrative and saying that the issues we ought to be concerned about are love and justice and treating our immigrant brothers and sisters right and caring for the poor, the sick, and the least of these.

The challenge that we need to hear in America is that even daring to announce a dream that's not attached to racism, that challenges militarism, that challenges poverty, can get you killed because those who want to engage in the nightmares of injustice cannot stand the prophets of subversive hopes and of dreams.

- [Martin Luther King] Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world.

(slow music) - Of all the things that connect these two men there's one that stands out to me more than another.

When Langston Hughes was in the hospital in New York City in May of 1967 he asked for a pen and paper and he wrote a letter to his dear friend, Martin Luther King.

King was away so King's assistant, Dora McDonald said, he'll reply when he gets back.

Hughes died and so King never replied to that letter.

I personally spent 12 years looking for that letter.

We ask ourselves a question.

What would Langston Hughes have on his death bed to Martin Luther King?

The answer isn't as hard as I thought.

Weeks earlier Martin Luther King had spoken out against the Vietnam war and Langston Hughes had heard about this.

Civil rights leaders like Roy Wilkins were so mad about what that would do to their finances they said they wanted to clux him.

Langston Hughes said, “Me, no, I love him.” So, of all the points that connect these two great men, civil rights leader, personal relationship, intellectual connections, the last dot in the constellation of their relationship is love.

Langston Hughes's last act on this earth was to write a letter of love and support to his dear friend, Martin Luther King and like all great acts of love it was delivered when he needed it most at the lowest point of Dr.

King's life.

(slow music) - I did not know the connection of Langston and Martin Luther King so it was one of these moments where history plays out.

There's a teachable moment for them and now me connecting the dots of these two great men who are poets both and walking in that unsafe place of moving us forward.

- You're always connecting these dots, you know?

The dots, the connection between all these great thinkers and a very extraordinary moment I think in American history, beginning of the 20th century was extraordinary.

All these men and women were at the center and the epicenter of a narrative, a discourse.

- Reverend King and Langston Hughes are people who emphasize service Who were the opposite of the political actors in the world today who talk a great deal about themselves.

One of the great speeches of Martin was, he was speaking about how magnificent it is to be able to serve.

- I can't tell you exactly what King did for me at 15 but it's a life long motivation to make things better.

It settled deep in my spirit and it won't let me stop.

You heard me say I'm 70.

The average 70 year-old is home sitting on their front porch, you know?

I'm still conceiving, dreaming, believing, and doing and somehow or the other that happened when I was 15 sitting in the gym at Booker T. Washington high school listening to this man say, I have a dream and you can have a dream and you can make it better for your community, for this world.

- This was a great time produced by a great crisis.

The crisis was 400 years old from the early days of slavery but this was the first generation that came together in such a way they could have a powerful impact that would change the world.

- I think there were giants in the 20th century two of which were Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King.

This was a time of really great men.

In many ways, because he died so young Martin Luther King is appreciated quicker but there could not have been a Martin Luther King without a Langston Hughes without a A. Philip Randolph, without a Ralph Bunch, and without a Thurgood Marshall.

- Dr.

King if he was alive today would say part of our dream actually is coming together.

So this is a time if we really want to believe in the dream of Dr.

King, we need to engage like never before.

- But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for our rights.

(crowd cheering) - I think we should learn to live together as brothers and sisters or as Martin said, we will perish together as fools - [Martin Luther King] To struggle together.

To go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day.

This will be the day when all of God's children... - [Crowd] Yes.

- Will be able to sing with new My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

- [Langston Hughes] All the progress that human beings have made on this old earth of ours grew out of dreams.

That is why it is wise, I should think, to hold fast to dreams.

For if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow.

- Langston Hughes has left a legacy that will outlive all of us.

Langston Hughes has challenged readers and listeners to give some attention to people who are different.

I believe Langston Hughes cared about human beings.

- [Langston Hughes] Oh, let my land be a land where liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath but opportunity is real and life is free.

Equality is in the air we breathe.

- [Martin Luther King] Let freedom ring and when that happens all of God's children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, we're free at last.

(crowd cheering) - The legacy of King having done I Have a Dream first in Rocky Mount for me is the legacy of the people who were in that room.

Because there's so many other people you could talk to that was there who remember, who he impacted, and so, I think it's the people who heard it, who live good lives, who's giving their lives to help somebody else, who raised good families, who produced good careers, and those careers have impact.

It created a cadre of people who had a lot of faith, who had a lot of faith in the dream, who worked their whole lives in order to be good human beings and who have contributed to society.

(slow music) - The burden to me is to make sure that dreams are not deferred as I work with my churches.

I work with male mentoring programs at the community colleges.

I don't want it to dry up like a raisin in the sun.

That is what was important to King.

You had to stand for people.

You had to stand for justice.

Let justice roll down like waters.

- [Joyce] We can do anything we need to do.

The dream is still alive and it's also time to continue to build as much as we can whether it's a neighborhood, a grocery store, jobs for people, economic transition, King's words, his power still speaks and we still have the capacity to make his dream come true because they're our dreams too.

- [Martin Luther King] I have a dream tonight.

That one day they will do unto us as they would have us to do unto them.

- That's his legacy.

Moving us forward.

Poetry has the power to speak to not just our minds but our hearts.

Hughes and King, they're both gone.

Their words, they live.

- [Danny Glover] I too dream a world.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues)