King’s Speech: We Know it and we don’t

While I was a graduate student at Ohio State University, I had the good fortune to take a Literary Bibliography class taught by Jim Bracken. The man has forgotten more about research than I will ever know.

One of the more memorable things I learned in his class was the maleability of text, and how we can never fully rely on the printed page. As an exercise, one day he brought in several copies of King’s I Have A Dream speech. To each student, he handed a different photocopy; some copies were made from books, others were printed off of the web. We each took our copies, and started to read.

As we did so, Professor Bracken began a tape recording of the famous speech. We all followed King’s words, and as the speech went on the exercise became more obvious. None of our copies matched the audio. I found myself lost after a few minutes, hearing King’s words but being unable to find them on my copy of his speech. I looked up and noticed other classmates with confused looks.

Even more remarkable, Professor Bracken pointed out moments in the speech where the audio was obviously spliced… making the audio recording suspect as well.

Like the Gettysburg Address, we learned that there is no one, true, authoritative version of King’s speech. When I heard this, I was floored. If you don’t believe me – try looking around on the web for versions of his speech. I bet you’ll find many, many discrepancies.

What has it been? Less than 50 years? And we still aren’t able to definitively document the words that King uttered in public? Professor Bracken taught us how, despite a massive crowd and our technology, we were unable to fully record a speech. That’s a humbling notion.

When his birthday rolls around, I often think of this class, and this exercise. Not because I wish to belittle King’s speech and claim we don’t fully know what he said. I think of this class and I think of how lucky we are, to have recorded those words that King did speak.

However flawed our recordings, his words are remarkable. I think of what is, and what is lost. I think of what words will continue long after we are gone, and I hope that mine can one day be as strong.