A group of NC State professors is working on a Virtual MLK research project, which uses technology available at the university to research, recreate and publicly release a re-enacted digital-audio speech famously given by Martin Luther King Jr. at a church in North Carolina.
On Feb. 16, 1960, King gave a speech before the congregation of the White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, urging his supporters to “fill-up the jails.”
This speech was the first time King told the African-American community and civil rights activists to take nonviolent direct action as a means for achieving civil rights in what would later become known as his famous “fill-up the jails” speech.
The Virtual MLK research project, which is set to have three phases total, began its first phase this summer. Playing the role of King, actor Marvin Banks re-enacted the original speech at the new White Rock Baptist Church on June 8, according to Victoria Gallagher, principle investigator of the research and professor of communication.
Researchers completed the second phase of the project recently when the they recorded the voice of Banks re-enacting the speech from four different perspectives in the church, mimicking what it would have sounded like for audience members in four different areas of the church.
Through the use of four recordings, the researchers hoped to capture what it would have sounded like to be in front of and behind King, in the balcony and in the audience of the church, Gallagher said.
Along with the recordings, phase II also marked the release of the project’s website.
Phase III has not been finalized, but Gallagher said it will involve the visual aspect of the project.
The yet-to-be-created visual will be built inside Hunt Library’s Immersion Lab, Gallagher said. This visual will attempt to replicate King’s speech at the original White Rock Baptist Church.
According to Gallagher, the project has implications for communication classes where it can be used to help teach students about effective speechmaking and show why delivery is important.
“It can show what it means to experience public address, rather than be a reader of public address,” Gallagher said.
King came to Durham after the 1960 sit-ins in Greensboro and went on to deliver one of his most significant speeches, according to Gallagher.
Phases I and II of the Virtual MLK research project were funded by two grants: a scholarly research award and a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, according to Gallagher.
Keon Pettiway, one of the students involved with the project and a graduate student studying communication rhetoric and digital media, said the process of creating these virtual re-enactments involves something called sprinting. Pettiway said this means each phase of the project represents the research coming together at particular moments to figure out the project’s next move.
“We are sprinting as a way to rapidly create and visualize what the product could be,” Pettiway said.
Gallagher said she was inspired to conduct this research project because of her personal history with subject matter.
“I have written on his speeches and their rhetorical impact on multiple occasions,” Gallagher said. “I have also studied civil rights commemoration.”
This project allows the humanities department a chance to use some of the more advanced technologies primarily used by the College of Sciences and College of Engineering, according to Gallagher.
Gallagher said this project is another opportunity for CHASS to conduct research, and it will provide an “immersive experience for communication and history students at social cultural events and improve speech delivery and experience of public address.”
