In honor of Black History Month, WUKY’s award-winning history series, Saving Stories, highlights an extraordinary interview from the Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Oral History Project "Who Speaks for the Negro?" available through UK Libraries' Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History.
Nunn Center director Doug Boyd and WUKY’s Alan Lytle share excerpts from a conversation between Kentucky author Robert Penn Warren and human rights activist Malcolm X from June 1964.
“While Martin Luther King Jr. advocated non-violence during the civil rights movement, Malcolm X had a much more separatist philosophy,” said Boyd.
In the episode, you can hear the one-on-one conversation where Malcolm X questions the effectiveness of nonviolent tactics.
The Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Oral History Project is a collection of interviews concerning the civil rights movement and the socioeconomic, cultural, and political struggles of African Americans. Conducted as research for his book, “Who Speaks for the Negro?” Warren, a Kentucky native and the first poet laureate of the United States, interviewed vital civil rights leaders and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr, Milton Galamison, Malcolm X, Carroll Baker, and more.
