Martin Luther King files go online
Martin Luther King files go online
17 January 2006
To celebrate Martin Luther King Day on 16 January, UK Government files relating to the American civil rights leader have been made available on a new educational website (http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/heroesvillains/) set up by The National Archives in Kew.
King´s battle over equal rights for African-Americans is documented through correspondence between the British Consulate in Washington and the UK Government, as well as letters and files about US Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.
The Learning Curve website includes:
Confidential telegrams from the British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Harold Caccia, to the Foreign Office, in September 1957, citing the infamous standoff between armed forces and local authorities in Little Rock, Arkansas over the admission of black students into desegregated high schools:
"On September 25 no less than 1,000 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division were on duty as the nine Negro students again entered school."
A letter to the Foreign Office from Mr J C Cloake in the British Embassy in Moscow, on 16 May 1963, presenting the Soviet media´s reaction to racial disturbances in the US:
"The Soviet press described the affair as a demonstration of the real meaning of ´so called´ American freedom."
A Confidential Despatch from the British Embassy in Washington to the Foreign Office, on 6 August 1963, describing civil rights demonstrations in the US:
"As the police dogs and fire hoses were turned against the Negro ministers, women and children demonstrating in Birmingham, Alabama, early in May, something seemed to snap among the nation´s 20 million Negroes."
A letter to the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan from the Balham & Tooting and Earlsfield branches of the Communist Party of Great Britain:
"The Communist Party of Great Britain calls on the Prime Minister to intercede with Mr Kennedy, President of the U.S.A., to use the full powers given to him in the Federal laws of the United States of America, to stop the inhuman brutality now being inflicted on the coloured population of Alabama."
A statement by President John F Kennedy, after the major civil rights "March on Washington" rally:
"The cause of 20 million Negroes has been advanced by the programme conducted so appropriately before the nation´s shrine to the Great Emancipator, but even more significant is the contribution to all mankind."
A transcription of Robert Kennedy´s announcement of King´s death at a political rally, 4 April 1968:
"Ladies and gentlemen: I´m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some very sad news for all of you - Could you lower those signs, please? - I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther king was shot and killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee."
Extract from President Lyndon Johnson´s speech on the death of Dr King, 8 April 1968:
"The dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, has not died with him. Men who are white - men who are black - must and will now join together as never in the past to let all the forces of divisiveness know that America shall not be ruled by the bullet, but only by the ballot of free and just men."
A letter from the British Consulate General in St Louis, Missouri, to the British Embassy in Washington about the trial of James Earl Ray (King´s convicted assassin):
"Department stores have lost business following the riots and the killing of Martin Luther King, with persons living outside the city reluctant to come into town."
The Learning Curve website is an online teaching resource structured to interface with the History National Curriculum from Key Stages 2 to 5. The Learning Curve contains a varied range of original sources including documents, photographs, film and sound recordings.
