August 28, 1963…I Have A Dream

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Here is one of the many cameras from every network covering the event.

NBC’s Chicago O&O, WNBQ had a big mobile unit and showed up with 6 cameras. NBC New York sent 2 mobile units and 10 cameras and NBC Washington, WRC had 5 on their mobile unit. CBS had 25 cameras there and ABC 20. They were spread all over town.

Source

9 Comments

  1. Ed Bartlett August 29, 2013

    No Lns back then?

  2. Paul Duca August 29, 2013

    Didn’t they have pool cameras?

  3. David Eatwell August 28, 2013

    “Thanks!” to major league baseball and the NFL for forcing the TV industry to develop the technology and capacity to do large-scale remotes!

  4. Jim Mac Donald August 28, 2013

    The cameraman here is Hollis Richardson. He went on to become a TD in Chicago. We zoomed in and saw the cigarette in his mouth was the give a way.

  5. Jim Mac Donald August 28, 2013

    CG3 did not come along until1969 for Nixons inaug parade.

  6. Mark Heller August 28, 2013

    Kinda re-writing history with this post. Fox Movietone News was the only CAMERA to film Dr. King’s speech from beginning to end. The audio from that film recording, was pressed into LP records. When you watch the networks today, you’ll see that they are depending on the original Fox newsreel footage.

  7. Jim Mac Donald August 28, 2013

    Chicagos truck CG 3 ? We here in Chicago are trying to identify the camerapeople

  8. Albert J. McGilvray August 28, 2013

    It just struck me how the coverage of Dr. King’s speech could have been a “dry-run” of sorts for the networks coverage of President Kennedy’s funeral just three months later. I realize they had no way of knowing that President Kennedy was going to die in three months, but I’m sure there were “lessons learned” in post-production meetings that came into play during those infamous “Four Days in November.”

  9. João Antonio Franz August 28, 2013

    Those were not in color?