T E X A R R A K I S

Editor's note: Perusing the internet recently, I found an extreme lack of availability on the internet of audio recordings of Dr Martin Luther King's recorded speeches. A few here and there, and half of them in the archaic Real Audio format. As far as I have been able to tell (and could be wrong), there is NO archive such as this anywhere on the internet. Which struck me as, completely absurd, and wrong. MLK's speeches are great reads, but actually listening to him deliver these speeches is really, quite incredible. The inflections in his voice, the roaring crowds. These speeches are still important, are still NECESSARY today, and I find it absolutely appalling that after hours of searching, I was only able to download the following MP3s via bittorrent.

I feel these days, the media seems to have watered down the memory of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and I've found listening to his speeches helps give you a much clearer understanding of who the man was, how important he was and still is, and refreshes our memories of what he managed to accomplish, and what troubles we still face. 

So here, to the embarrassment of the entirety of the internet itself, I have taken it upon myself to offer as many of MLK's speeches as possible, in the most comprehensive, simple format possible. You can either listen to them on this page, or follow this link to the download page, where you may save them directly to your computer, and hopefully these will promulgate themselves across the internet; it is a travesty that these are not already widespread and available.

A reader recently suggested we supplement these speeches with the following video, of John Coltrane's song "Alabama". This was made in response to the bombing of the 16th street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and patterned his saxophone playing on Dr. King's funeral speech 'Eulogy for the Martyred Children' (which is available to listen to below). We present the video to you:

So finally, here they are, here are the speeches, in all of their glory, available to listen directly on this page below, or to download using the following links.

Download MP3 audio files of these speeches on this site by clicking here
Download torrent containing all of these files by clicking here (must have bittorrent client)

OR LISTEN DIRECTLY ON THIS PAGE