At Molloy, Nassau high school students use VR to witness unrecorded MLK's 'fill up the jails' speech - Newsday

It was 1 of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s important speeches, but arsenic acold arsenic historians know, nary 1 recorded it.

So a North Carolina State University squad enactment unneurotic a virtual recreation of King’s “Fill Up The Jails” code successful Durham, North Carolina in 1960, erstwhile helium endorsed the caller “direct action” protests of sit-ins astatine Woolworth’s luncheon counters to extremity segregation.

On Friday, the programme came to Molloy University successful Rockville Centre, wherever 120 students from nationalist precocious schools successful Roosevelt, Freeport, and Baldwin watched the recreation done virtual world headsets.

For some, it deepened their admiration of America’s foremost civilian rights leader. For others — recent immigrants from Latin America — it was a accidental to larn astir thing they knew small of: historical organization racism successful the United States.

Bianca Ballesteros, 17, a pupil astatine Freeport High School and a caller migrant from Colombia, said she was stunned by scenes successful portion of the programme that showed Blacks forced to usage a abstracted entranceway to the Royal Ice Cream Parlor successful Durham, and prohibited from entering the country reserved for whites.

“It’s truly bully to larn astir this, due to the fact that earlier I knew precise small astir him,” she said successful Spanish. “There was a batch of racism, and they didn’t person rights due to the fact that they were Black.”

Johanny Gutierrez, 14, besides a Freeport student, said the programme was “really inspirational and precise empowering. I deliberation much radical should person the quality to see” it.

The programme is portion of the Virtual Martin Luther King Jr., Project astatine North Carolina State University. A then-doctoral pupil who worked connected it there, Max Renner, is present an adjunct prof of communications and caller media astatine Molloy.

King gave the code astatine the White Rock Baptist Church connected Feb. 16, 1960, astir 2 weeks aft the celebrated sit-ins started successful Greensboro. For the archetypal time, helium was encouraging activists to disrupt and interruption the law through nonviolent confrontation, adjacent if it meant “filling up the jails.” 

Kesson Sorsor, a elder astatine Freeport High School, interacts during a virtual world acquisition astatine Molloy University in Rockville Centre connected Friday. Credit: Johnny Milano

He came to Durham partially due to the fact that a half-dozen African American students nether the tutelage of 1 of his erstwhile classmates, the Rev. Douglas E. Moore, had staged their ain sit-in 3 years earlier astatine the segregated Royal Ice Cream Parlor. After refusing to leave, they were arrested and fined $10 positive tribunal fees.

Some historians judge the Durham enactment connected June 23, 1957, inspired the Greensboro activists, whose luncheon antagonistic sit-ins ignited akin protests passim the South, Renner said.

But the Durham sit-in went mostly unnoticed among the public, successful portion due to the fact that — dissimilar successful Greensboro — determination were nary TV cameras and different media to grounds it, helium said.

The North Carolina State University researchers enactment unneurotic King’s code done a transcript written by a quality newsman that is present successful his archives astatine Stanford University.

“Let america not fearfulness going to jail,” King told the gathering. “If the officials endanger to apprehension america for lasting up for our rights, we indispensable reply by saying that we are consenting and prepared to capable up the jails of the South.”

The researchers hired a dependable histrion to work King’s speech, and produced a integer recreation of the religion and the speech.

The code shows however King “realized that this is the aboriginal of the civilian rights movement,” Renner said. “It has to beryllium a signifier of much nonstop action, adjacent if it means filling up the jails of the South.”