Nine months before Martin Luther King Jr. famously marched on Washington, D.C. to address millions of people on the National Mall, he was invited by Pastor Dudley of Mt. Zion Baptist Church to speak in Rocky Mount. 

In his speech, Nov. 27, 1962, in a gym at Atlantic Avenue and Spruce Street in Rocky Mount Rocky, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech with the refrain "I have a dream," used in his Lincoln Memorial address in 1963.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to Rocky Mount, NC by Reverend George Dudley of Mt. Zion First Baptist Church on behalf of the Voters and Improvement League. Dr. King accepted Reverend Dudley’s invitation. In November of 1962, Dr. King arrived in Rocky Mount. In the gymnasium of Booker T. Washington High School, he delivered his “I have a dream” speech for the first time. In the following year, Dr. King went to Washington where he delivered his speech again – this time to the nation. Booker T. Washington High School was built for African American secondary school students during the time of segregation. The brand-new school was opened to African American students in 1927 and continued to educate them until 1969. 

After desegregation, Rocky Mount Senior High School, once the school for white students, became, for a time, Rocky Mount’s only high school. The school colors of both schools (royal blue and gold for Booker T. and black and gold from RMSH) were combined to create new representative colors symbolize the union of both groups. Similarly, the mascots of both schools, the lions and the blackbirds, were combined to represent the union of the two schools. The result was the gryphon – half bird, half lion. These choices were made by the students. To this day, Rocky Mount High School’s mascot is the Gryphon and their colors are navy blue and gold. 

W. Jason Miller, English professor at N.C. State University re-discovered an "old reel-to-reel" tape of King's "I have a dream" speech. He found it in a Rocky Mount public library. Upon finding this historical gem, Miller had it restored, greatly improving the sound quality, by a professional archivist in Philadelphia. A historic marker dedicated to Dr. King’s 1962 speech is located in walking distance from Booker T. Washington Community Center. 

Booker T. Washington High School is still standing today – it is now Booker T. Washington Community Center.

A speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. in Rocky Mount on November 27, 1962, has drawn much attention. In that address, before 1,800 in the gymnasium. Dr. King used a number of expressions that made their way into the landmark speech at the Lincoln Memorial, part of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. In Rocky Mount, Dr. King began by noting that he had been in North Carolina “many, many times” but that this was his “first time in this section.” (He paid multiple visits to Durham and Raleigh.) 

Near the close he 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. . . .” 

Some have asserted that this marked the first use of the “I have a dream” phrase. Clayborne Carson, King Papers editor at Stanford University, has examined the address and declines to say that this was the first such use but states that it “appears to be an important new rhetorical formulation.” Attorney Drew Hansen in 2003 published The Dream, a book-length account of the landmark speech. He indicates that the words were used in Albany, Georgia, prior to their use in Rocky Mount. Near the end of his life, in an interview, Dr. King recalled that the tired Georgia audience failed to be moved by the words. By the spring and summer of 1963 the words were among the most frequent of his set pieces. 

Visit the Location at 400 E Virginia St, Rocky Mount, NC 27801