Virtual Martin Luther King, Jr. Project
Reviewed by: Alex Lee
Review date: March 4, 2025
Site Link: https://vmlk.chass.ncsu.edu/
Archive Link: https://archive.ph/ljpoc
Keywords: African and African Diaspora Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, Virtual and Augmented Reality
Data Sources:
- The transcript of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (his “A Creative Protest” speech), which was delivered on February 16, 1960 at White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina.
- Photographs from Dr. King’s speech.
- Architectural floor plans of the White Rock Baptist Church
Processes:
- Reenactment of Dr. King’s speech, performed by a voice actor in the modern-day White Rock Baptist Church to a crowd.
- Recording of the reenactment from numerous vantage points, capturing several sonic perspectives.
- 3D simulation of the ‘60s-era White Rock Baptist Church, reconstructed from incomplete architectural plans and contemporary photographs.
- Mapping the performance of the reenacted speech onto a virtual simulation of Dr. King in the virtual church environment, including simulations of crowd members.
Presentation:
The project encompasses a site-specific physical installation, as well as a web-based representation of the installation experience. The landing page of the web-based portion includes a static background image that appears to show the White Rock Baptist Church. A navigational menu and a series of content boxes include hyperlinks to a variety of multimedia materials (primary documents, secondary descriptive texts, photographs, videos, and audio recordings) that users can browse.
Digital Tools Used:
- Motion capture
- 3D modeling and 360-degree video simulation
- Audio recording
- TimelineJS
- Front-end web development (HTML, CSS, JS)
Languages:
- English
Review
The Virtual MLK project emerged from efforts by Dr. Victoria Gallagher, Distinguished University Professor of Communication at North Carolina State University, and her team to find a historical speech delivered in North Carolina and represent it in a modern setting. They landed on Dr. King’s “A Creative Protest (Fill up the jails)” speech, which was delivered in Greensboro, NC in February 1960 but for which no audio or video recordings remain. Their goal was to bring this speech into conversation with the present moment by exploring how sensations such as sound and sight could support more embodied and present forms of engagement.
Over several years, the project expanded progressively, first from a reenactment of the original speech, then to a series of audio recordings from different vantage points within the reenacted space, then to an immersive simulation experience combining the reenacted audio and visual representations of it in 3D.
Even from its initial stages in 2013-14, the project was developed in partnership with North Carolina State University’s Hunt Library. The project subsequently received grants to extend the project’s reach: an NEH Digital Projects for the Public Grant (2019) and a Digital Extension Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (2021).
The web-based portion, which I review here, did not commence until 5 or 6 years into the project, following the development of the immersive digital experience and several public exhibitions. The purpose of housing and presenting the various materials on the website was to encourage broader reach and access beyond those who could physically attend the in-person exhibitions. As such, the website partially attempts to recreate the physical experience of being there, although by nature of the translation to the web format, it creates a more fractured and polyphonic experience.
The site’s landing page offers a brief description of the project alongside a “behind-the-scenes” YouTube video. Next to this is a 2x3 row of boxes, with each of the 6 boxes linking to a different part of the site. These span “Collective Sound Experience,” “Listening Experience,” “Historical Experience,” “Virtual Reality Experience,” “Simulation Experience,” and “Your Creative Protest.”
The user can explore each of these, and 3 of the options link directly to actual experiences (e.g., the reenactment audio recording, the VR simulation of the reenactment). However, the other 3 tiles link to further menus of options that lead the user further into a labyrinth of possibilities. For instance, opening “Listening Experience” reveals 5 subsequent options, such as “Historical Perspective” (which one might expect to have been included in the “Historical Experience” category) and a video of the speech reenactment (which doesn’t really qualify as a “listening” experience per se).
I found myself exploring the numerous experiences trying to figure out how they were connected and piece together a narrative for myself. This was a somewhat daunting, though generally exciting, task, but it’s likely that users may feel intimidated by the sheer number of options and interactions.
The website also offers numerous supplementary materials, from historical analysis, to Dr. King’s speech itself (in plain text), to educational lesson plans and resources. Like the numerous multimedia elements, these offer myriad ways to extend, expand, and deepen the experience of the speech itself, allowing for flexible adaptation depending on audience and use case. However, packing so many resources in a single frame poses a risk of obscuring the most compelling parts from a general audience that may not be as inclined to dig to find them.
Nevertheless, the project represents a unique approach to embodying history to give us a sense of what it was like to experience Dr. King’s speech firsthand. The impact is powerful: One feels Dr. King’s delivery through this multimedia recreation to a far greater degree than if they were just to read the transcript. It makes an argument for digital technologies’ ability to perform the past in the present.
How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project and are there elements that work particularly well?
This project represents collaboration at every level. The project investigators formed working relationships across NC State University — including students, faculty, and the institution itself — as well as with members of the community (such as with the modern-day congregation of White Rock Baptist Church and with voice and body actors). This allowed them to benefit from a diverse range of skill sets, including on the technology front in areas like 3D simulation, audio modeling, and virtual reality. Finally, the in-person exhibitions themselves included a collaborative element: Visitors were encouraged to write their own “creative protests” on white boards to continue the legacy of action inspired by Dr. King and the students who protested in Greensboro a half-century ago.
Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?
For all the ways that the overarching project embraced collaboration, I feel the web-based portion could take greater advantage of the web’s inherent networking properties to encourage shared digital experiences, such as virtual events where participants could join a live, synchronous reenactment and could interact with each other through chat while viewing it. This would help extend the project’s potential reach — and impact — even further.