Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 251

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
MARTIN LUTHER KING. Advance press copy of his Nobel Peace Prize lecture. 17 printed pages, 10½ x 8 inches, fastened with one small staple; final leaf detached with a small stain, otherwise minimal wear. Oslo, Norway: Nobel Foundation, 11 December 1964
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Martin Luther King accepted his Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 1964, and gave a short acceptance speech. The next evening he delivered this Nobel Lecture to the students of Oslo University. While it is not among his best-known speeches, it holds up in comparison, and is notable for its global perspective. King contrasts the great riches and technological advancements of the modern world with mankind's increasing "poverty of spirit": "We have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers." He addresses not only the struggle against racial injustice, but also poverty and war: "There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it." Reflecting on the recent presidential election of Johnson over Goldwater, he describes how "the voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path."

On the first page and final pages, the Nobel Foundation instructed recipients of this speech that it was "not to be published until Friday 11th December, 7 p.m." (perhaps 7 p.m. Oslo time). We don't find any newspapers that published it in full, although extracts were published widely.

One in OCLC, at the University of Illinois.

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