Happy MLK Day. Seeing the major U.S. presidential candidates assemblying on the steps of the State House in Columbia, South Carolina today, led me to think of the remarkable film from the USC Newsfilm Library, which was screened at the Orphan Film Symposium in 2004. Shot in 16mm by a television news crew from Columbia, the footage gives us four minutes of King, May 9, 1966, telling a large crowd in the small town of Kingstree, SC, to "march on ballot boxes." His voice was stirring as always. More inspirational: a family who had been at the event in 1966 came to the screening and were deeply moved by this filmed record of Martin Luther King, Jr. firing up the Kingstree community. They were stunned and thrilled to find that a movie capturing that moment existed. And had been preserved and brought to life again.
