Skip to content

Spring Fund Drive

The on-air portion of our fund drive has ended, but there's still time to help close the gap in our overall goal by March 31st. If you've yet to donate, please give now! If you've already supported or are a sustaining donor to KBCS, thank you so much!

$110,000 Goal

97.48%

Drive ends: March 31, 2024

Please enable your javascript to have a better view of the website. Click here to learn more about it.
single.php

Newly discovered Dr. Martin Luther King speech

Courtesy: U.S. Embassy New Delhi President Lyndon Johnson shakes hands with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., after handing him one of the pens used in signing the Civil Rights Act of July 2, 1964 at the White House in Washington.

January 19, 2015 - 9:28 am

91.3 KBCS celebrates Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day by airing parts of a previously unknown recording of Dr. King discovered last December by Pacifica Radio Network. Audio of the speech will be broadcast for the first time since it’s discovery on Democracy Now! heard on 91.3 KBCS at 6 a.m., 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. You can also listen on our Democracy Now audio archive.

The recently discovered audio of Dr. King is from a speech delivered in London on December 7, 1964. Pacifica Radio Network discovered the recording last December and verified it as the only known recording of the 62-minute speech. This is also thought to be the only known recording of a comprehensive public statement by Dr. King on apartheid in South Africa.

The taped recording was made by Saul Bernstein, identified as a “Pacifica European Correspondent.” In order to not lose any of the speech while changing tapes, he used a “half-track format” with half of the speech recorded in one direction on half of the tape and the rest of the speech recorded on the other half of the tape going the opposite direction. The entire speech was converted to digital format by the Pacifica Radio Archives staff, who corrected sound distortions.

For information on purchasing copies of the speech, please visit Pacific Radio Archives.

Photo courtesy: U.S. Embassy New Delhi