Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Information about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Special Collections, Ekstrom Library.
Primary sources in the University of Louisville Libraries Special Collections
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. 250,000 people gathered for the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital. The peaceful protest attracted national television coverage, and networks interrupted scheduled programing to broadcast Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.
Louisville born photojournalist Gordon Baer covered the March on Washington, and captured these images of the crowd and of one exhausted marcher symbolizing the dream. Gordon Baer presented this diptych to the Photographic Archives in June 2009.
On March 5, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined Kentucky civil rights leaders and 10,000 citizens in a March on Frankfort. The demonstration's call for an end to segregation and discrimination in stores, restaurants, theaters and businesses was finally answered in 1966 with the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, making discrimination in the Commonwealth illegal. University of Louisville art professor and founder of the Photographic Archives Robert Doherty and photojournalist James Keen documented the historic march with these images, now in their respective collections within the Photographic Archives collections.
Dr. King inscribed these books when he presented them to his friends Louisville-based civil rights activists Anne and Carl Braden, and their children James and Beth. Dr. King's Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958) bears the inscription "To my Friends Carl and Anne Braden Whose genuine goodwill land great humanitarian concern have contributed much the constant stride toward freedom. Martin L. King Jr." The children's book Martin Luther King: The Peaceful Warrior by Ed Clayton, illustrated by David Hodges (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964) is inscribed "To Jimmy and Beth Braden, For whom I wish a future packed with meaningful fulfillment. Martin Luther King Jr." The books, preserved in Rare Books' vault, came to the University of Louisville with the Anne McCarty Braden Papers, housed in University Archives on the fourth floor of Ekstrom Library, and the Carl and Anne Braden Library within the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research on the second floor of Ekstrom Library.
