From R.D. Armstrong’s column in The Evening Telegram on Sunday, 12/2/62: The big news here during the past week was the appearance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who spoke to a capacity audience at the Booker T. Washington Senior High School gymnasium Tuesday night. Here are some side-lights on that meeting: The Rocky Mount Voters and Improvement League which sponsored the program, planned to open the doors of the gymnasium at 7 p.m. That plan, however, had to be abandoned as people started arriving at 6 p.m. By 7 p.m. the 800 chairs that had been placed on the basketball court had been taken and the bleachers were beginning to fill. We contacted one of Rocky Mounts older citizens, Fletcher Westry, about the appearance here shortly after the turn of the century of Booker T. Washington and asked how did Washingtons visit here compare with Dr. King. The meeting for Booker T. Washingtons was held in the old Davis Warehouse (now Fenners) and an estimated crowd of 2,000 from all sections of Eastern North Carolina came to hear him. Mr. Westry also recalls having had the assignment of waiting on Mr. Washington at a banquet in an empty store of Washington Street and almost spilled a bowl of soup down his back. The meeting here Tuesday night also attracted approximately 2,000. An estimated 1,800 were in the gymnasium and more than 300 were turned away. Senior high school students were seen taking notes throughout the audience for class reports. Carl Rozelle from WITN television and Charlie Killebrew from the Rocky Mount Telegram gave the meeting pictorial coverage. People were here from as far away as Edenton and as far west as Henderson. Also from Goldsboro to the south and the Virginia line on the north. Officers of the Rocky Mount Voters and Improvement League were high in their praise for the Rocky Mount Board of Education and the superintendent for the fine cooperation given the organization in helping to stage the meeting. (The “meeting” went largely unnoticed by The Telegram, which described it as a “Negro rally.” Near the close Dr. King built toward these lines: “I have a dream that one day right here in Rocky Mount, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will meet at the table of brotherhood, knowing that one God brought man to the face of the Earth. I have a dream tonight that one day my little daughter and my two sons will grow up in a world not conscious of the color of their skin, but only conscious of the fact that they are members of the human race. . . .” In 2007 the King speech was commemorated by an historical marker that recognized it as an early version of his legendary Lincoln Memorial address.)
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:44:52 +0000
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