NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Magician David Copperfield has purchased a newly discovered audiotape of a Martin Luther King Jr. interview and is donating it to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
Copperfield told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he purchased the 1960 tape this week from New York-based collector and broker Keya Morgan, who acquired it from Stephon Tull, of Chattanooga.
Tull was looking through dusty old boxes in his father's attic in Chattanooga a few months ago when he stumbled onto something startling: an audio reel labeled, "Dr. King interview, Dec. 21, 1960."
The clear audio recording includes King discussing the importance of the civil rights movement, his definition of nonviolence and his visit to Africa.
Tull said the recording had been in the attic for years, and he wasn't sure who other than his father may have heard it.
"No words can describe. I couldn't believe it," he told The Associated Press. "I found ... a lost part of history."
Tull said his father, an insurance salesman, had planned to write a book about the racism he encountered growing up in Chattanooga and later as an adult. He said his dad interviewed King when he visited the city, but never completed the book and just stored the recording with some other interviews he had done. Tull's father is now in his early 80s and under hospice care.
During part of the interview, King defines nonviolence and justifies its practice.
"I would ... say that it is a method which seeks to secure a moral end through moral means," he said. "And it grows out of the whole concept of love, because if one is truly nonviolent that person has a loving spirit, he refuses to inflict injury upon the opponent because he loves the opponent."
The interview was made four years before the Civil Rights Act became law, three years before King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, and eight years before his assassination. At one point in the interview, King predicts the impact of the civil rights movement.
"I am convinced that when the history books are written in future years, historians will have to record this movement as one of the greatest epochs of our heritage," he said.
Copperfield said he purchased the recording because he didn't want it to be hoarded away but shared with people to promote King's message of nonviolence. He didn't disclose the price, but Morgan appraised the tape at $100,000.
The museum is at the site where King was assassinated in 1968.
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