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King's last Minnesota visit preserved on news film

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's final visit to Minnesota, in 1967, is preserved on news film shot by KARE and another local TV station.

Editor's Note: This story originally aired in January 2018

MINNEAPOLIS -- When the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday rolls around each year, we often see the vintage images of the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered his iconic "I have a dream" speech.

Four years later, in April of 1967, King drew hundreds to an outdoor event at U of M's St. Paul Campus, home of the School of Agriculture. By then his message had broadened to include opposition to the ongoing war in Vietnam, which he also viewed as a civil rights issue.

Parts of that speech are preserved in news film shot that day by local television news photographers who had no idea they'd be seeing King for the last time in person. He was assassinated a year later in Memphis.

"In all of our cities today, large Negro populations find themselves in the conditions of being potential powder kegs," King told the mostly white audience, pointing to the underlying conditions that could lead to another summer of unrest.

"Nothing much is really being done to get rid of the conditions that brought riots into being in many of our cities last summer, and other summers."

KARE photojournalist Doug Froemming saved the black-and-white film clips that aired that day on Channel 11, known at the time as WTCN-TV. Froemming gave copies of his film transfers to KARE when he retired in 2001.

In the other clip that aired that day in 1967, King can be heard reiterating his philosophy of nonviolent resistance.

"Now certainly I will continue to condemn riots. I’m still convinced nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in the struggle for human dignity," Dr. King remarked.

"And I can see nothing more harmful, more detrimental to the Negro himself, than to come to the conclusion that violence should be a strategy for social change."

Competing station KSTP-TV also saved its film footage from that day, which was shot in color.

That archival footage was eventually donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. Excerpts of it were played in during the annual General Mills Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast in Minneapolis Monday.

"And I personally decided to tell America the truth, because I love America so much, and I want to see our great nation stand as the moral example of the world," King can be heard saying in the KSTP clip.

"I don’t determine what is right or wrong by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion," he declared in another excerpt that was preserved by KSTP.

"And injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I’m concerned about justice for everybody the world over."

The man who played King

Later at the same breakfast event, the crowd heard from British Nigerian actor David Oyelowo, who played the part of King in the 2014 film Selma.

"It is no accident, I truly believe this, that God chose a man called 'King' to remind and reprimand this nation for the ills done to a kingly people, from a kingly place!"

He said to move forward, to build a bridge to a better future, African Americans must know who they are; must view the full extent of their heritage.

"Through slavery, what was taken from Africa was Africa’s best. If you are an African American you are Africa’s best. You are descended from Africa’s best, that means you are America’s best!"

Oyelowo, who spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, said he never had to deal with notion that his ancestors had only been slaves. He said it struck him during his visits to the Smithsonian's Museum of African American History and Culture.

"One of things I always feel when I leave that building is how debilitating it would be if, for me, I thought, had been taught, and felt that my history began with slavery," Oyelowo told the crowd.

"I know that my history did not begin with slavery."

Oyelowo, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of King, said he was handed the script in 2007 shortly after moving to Los Angeles from the United Kingdom.

"On the 24th of July in 2007 I heard an audible voice. God told me I was going to play Dr. King in that film," he said, before taking a long pause as if to compose himself.

"I only pause like that because I’m still shocked. I’m shocked that I am here, talking to you on this day of days, having anything by way of association with this great man."

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