Discovered footage shows 11-year-old Prince on teachers' strike picket line

In newly unearthed footage of the late musician, 11-year-old Prince speaks to a news team in support of a 1970 teachers' strike.

The restored news segment features a very young Prince outside of his high school in Minneapolis where a strike was taking place. “Are most kids in favour of the picketing?” asked the reporter, to which Prince says yes.

“I think they should get a better education too. And I think they [the teachers] should get some more money because they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff,” he tells the news team.

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Just 11 at the time, Prince, who went by his full name Prince Rogers Nelson, would go on to support social justice causes and stand as an activist for a number of causes later in life.

The footage was found by the Minnesota CBS News affiliate WCCO who was compiling footage from the 1970 strike for restoration.

“I immediately went out to the newsroom and started showing people, and saying, ‘I’m not gonna tell you who I think this is, but who do you think this is?’” said WCCO production manager Matt Liddy in an interview following the unearthed footage.

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“Every single person: ‘Prince’,” he said. Liddy added that confirming the soon-to-be superstar’s identity was slightly more tricky, though.

An audio specialist was hired to extract the sound from the old footage, and classmates who were also featured in the news segment were tracked down - to no avail.

WCCO then got in touch with Twin Cities landmark historian and Prince superfan Kristen Zschomler, who confirmed that the 11-year-old was in fact the late singer through photos of the school building as seen in the background of the video.

Check out the restored video below.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter