Capturing history — one voice at a time

“And I said, 'I know who had a tuxedo,'” Gloria said. And as fate would have it, King was out of town and another of Gloria’s sisters, Hazel, was working in the King home.

“So I called Hazel, I said, 'Hazel, me and Marvin is on the way over there.' I said, 'we got to get a tuxedo tonight.' She said, ‘where am I gonna get it from?’ I said, 'Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has one.' She said, ‘I can not let you borrow his clothes!’”

Moments later, Gloria and her date were at the door of the King home.

“And Hazel let us in and she was just a fussin’," recalled Gloria. "‘I don’t know why you doin’ this? You know I can’t do this.’ I said, 'I got to get this tuxedo for Marvin to take me to this affair.' And so she said, ‘Well, get in here in the bathroom and change clothes. I’ll let you wear it, but you better bring it back!’”

So that’s how a tux fit for a King went to the party without him.

“And to this day Martin Luther King Jr. never did know that we borrowed his tuxedo," said Gloria.

StoryCorps Taylor and Bessie Rogers record their stories in the StoryCorps Griot trailer

Thanks to the Griot Initiative, those three sisters will be able to tell that story again and again for generations to come. As will Taylor and Bessie Rogers.

"As a 12-year-old, I was just magnetized by his charisma," says Taylor Rogers of King. Rogers and his wife Bessie didn't know King, but they were in the room that night in Memphis for his last speech.

"You could tell by the expression on his face, he knew something was going to happen," Bessie says.

The Griot project will travel the country for a full year gathering the stories of thousands of African American families from all walks of life. But it's not the first time something like this has been done.

In the 1930s, a government program conducted 2,300 interviews of former slaves — now considered one of the most important collections of its kind.

"If I thought I'd ever be a slave again, I'd take a gun and end it," one of the voices on the tapes proclaims.               

Like those, these latest stories will be archived in the Library of Congress for future study, in essence making this silver trailer a time machine that allows the voices of today to speak to the children of tomorrow.

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