In this WSB newsfilm clip from July 27, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks about recent race riots in New York City and Rochester, New York and comments on the role of race relations in the 1964 presidential election. Dr. King, sitting at a desk with microphones in front of him, answers questions by an off-screen reporter indicating that New York City mayor Robert F. Warner reached him July 24 while he was in Mississippi to ask him to come to New York to try and help curb racial tensions in the city. Commenting on reports of "strong subversive and communist elements identified" in rioting in the neighborhoods of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, King suggests that while Communist groups may take advantage of African American discontent, he believes the rioting in New York is a result of a white, off-duty policeman shooting an African American boy. On July 10 an off-duty policeman shot and killed an African American young man he said was carrying a knife. The killing sparked rioting in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Another reporter asks King if continued civil rights demonstrations will hurt president Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign for reelection. King recognizes that violent demonstrations do more to help Republican candidate senator Barry M. Goldwater, who he accuses of capitalizing "on the so-called white backlash whether he admits it publicly or not." He calls upon demonstrations before the election to be "well-disciplined and dignified." After a July 30 meeting with leaders from several prominent civil rights organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), civil rights leaders issued a resolution calling for a "broad curtailment if not total moratorium" on all demonstrations before the election.

After a break in the clip, King asserts the importance of civil rights as the "chief domestic issue" in the presidential campaign and expresses his hope for a national call for compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and removing "conditions of injustice that still pervade our nation and all of the other things which can only deepen the racial crisis." King later proposes that civil rights demonstrations in the South may more easily remain nonviolent because of clear goals rather than general protests. The clip breaks again and King concludes the New York City riots are an antipolice revolt stemming from a concern among the African American community the police force and in particular police brutality. He recommends more African American police officers.

After rioting in New York City began on July 10, one local African American newspaper editor blamed "leftist civil rights agitators" including King, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) among other civil rights leaders; many African Americans in New York discounted the alleged Communist role in the rioting. A report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) eventually indicated the riots were independent and not started or influenced by communist groups.

Title supplied by cataloger.

The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for digital conversion and description of the WSB-TV Newsfilm Collection.

1 clip (about 5 min.): black-and-white, sound ; 16 mm.

Original found in the WSB-TV newsfilm collection.

WSB-TV newsfilm clip of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking about recent race riots in New York State as well as the 1964 presidential election, New York, New York, 1964 July 27, WSB-TV newsfilm collection, reel 1188, 00:00/05:28, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, The University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Ga, as presented in the Digital Library of Georgia.

Forms part of: Civil Rights Digital Library.