Martin Luther King’s historic visit to Newcastle to be subject of new book

A fascinating new book about Martin Luther King’s historic visit to Newcastle University will be published next month by Newcastle Libraries’ Tyne Bridge Publishing to coincide with the 50th anniversary of this landmark event.

Martin Luther King in Newcastle by Northumbria University’s Professor in American Studies, Brian Ward, brings alive the historic significance and contemporary relevance of this episode in North East, British and US history.

The book tells the inside story of Dr. King’s visit, explaining why he was invited, the events of the day itself, and why he flew across the Atlantic to spend less than eleven hours in a city that he knew little about at a time of enormous professional strain and personal doubt. The book reveals how Brian discovered film of Dr. King’s ‘lost’ Newcastle speech’ and puts the civil rights leader’s inspiring words into the context of 1960s’ British and US race relations, arguing for their continued relevance and importance in 2017.

Brian’s book also places Dr. King’s visit within another lost history: the link between the African American freedom struggle and the North East. It not only shows how he was one of many distinguished African American visitors to the region, including Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass before him and Muhammad Ali and Harry Belafonte afterwards, but also explains how those connections influenced the development of race relations in the region.

Martin Luther King in Newcastle has already received international praise from a number of sources. Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah said: “Brian Ward’s book helps to recover the history of racial, ethnic and religious diversity on Tyneside, along with the region’s many international connections. This important book is as timely as it is compelling.”