In the 1960s, Motown founder Berry Gordy reached out to Martin Luther King Jr. to see if the record label could help the civil rights leader in his cause for equality. “I saw Motown much like the world he was fighting for — people of all races and religions, working together harmoniously for a common goal,” Gordy told TIME magazine. That resulted in Motown recording and releasing King’s “Walk to Freedom” speech and rally at Detroit’s then-Cobo Hall in June 1963, a precursor to the famous “I have a dream” speech King would later deliver in Washington, D.C. The effort also marked Motown’s first spoken-word recording; the label would later release a posthumous compilation of King’s major speeches, Free at Last.
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