TEMPE, Ariz. — A nearly forgotten piece of Arizona history was uncovered on the shelves of a Valley thrift store in 2013.
A shopper discovered a thin box containing an audiotape reel, which held the only known recording of a speech delivered at Arizona State University's Goodwin Stadium nearly 50 years earlier by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The tape was turned over to the ASU archival department, which restored King's ASU speech and another he delivered earlier that day at Tanner Chapel AME Church.
“The wind of change is blowing,” King said in front of roughly 8,000 people. “And in a real sense, it is sweeping away an old order, and bringing into being a new order.”
The speech was delivered in June 1964, a week before the Civil Rights Act would be signed into law and effectively outlaw racial discrimination. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill, the Senate held it up in a lengthy filibuster and the legislation's fate was uncertain.
On the top of King’s mind that night was segregation. He spoke for nearly an hour on the topic, calling for all people to stand against legal racism and the challenges they would face.
“We are challenged to get rid of the notion once and for all, that there are superior and inferior races,” King said to a cheering crowd. “America never will be a great nation, and the world never will be a great world, until we get rid of this false idea.”
It was professionally risky for then-ASU President Homer Durham to invite the civil rights leader to speak at the Tempe campus.
The popular and powerful Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was opposed to the Civil Rights Act and Durham’s own church, The Church of Latter-Day Saints, would not recognize equal rights for another 14 years.
King’s speech that night has been credited with sending the message that Arizona is not against civil rights.
Lawyer Herb Ely, who worked with the Maricopa Country NAACP, would later tell ASU News that King’s speech inspired him to draft the Arizona civil rights bill, which was passed into law less than a year later.
King wrapped up his speech that June night by invoking a popular refrain:
“With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day when all of God’s children- Black men and white men, Jews and Gentile, Protestants and Catholics, will be able [to] join hands all over this nation, and sign in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.'”
Up to Speed
Catch up on the latest news and stories on the 12 News YouTube channel. Subscribe today.