Quick Search
More Campus News
Civil Rights Leader Brought His Dream to Hartford
Posted 1/16/2006
This was the publicity photo of Martin Luther King Jr. for his 1959 University of Hartford lecture.
This flyer advertised King's 1959 speech on "The Future of Integration," part of the University of Hartford's Keller Lecture Series.
King delivered a speech on “The Future of Integration” on May 7, 1959, at Hartford’s Bushnell Memorial Hall, as part of the University of Hartford’s Alexander S. Keller Memorial Fund Lecture Series.
Original audiotapes of the speech are housed in the University Archives. The staff of the Hartt Recording Studio recently transferred the old reel-to-reel tape onto compact discs, which will be available to faculty and students through the Archives.
The University of Hartford was just two years old at the time of King's speech, and King himself was only 30. He had already gained national fame as the leader of the 1955-56 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, but his historic “I Have a Dream” speech was still more than four years away.
In addition to speaking as part of the Keller Lecture Series, King met informally that day with students at the university’s Hillyer College, and with editors of the student newspaper, The Callboard.
“I came away from that day knowing I had been in the presence of a great man,” said Reid MacCluggage ’62, who was Feature Editor of The Callboard. “Four years before he shared his dream with the nation, he had shared it with us.”
MacCluggage, a former university regent and retired editor and publisher of The Day (New London, Conn.), said that “to many of us in the 1950s, the civil rights movement was only a Southern issue. Dr. King corrected that impression. Civil rights was a human issue.”
After being introduced by Hillyer College President Alan S. Wilson, King began his lecture at The Bushnell by noting his fondness for the Hartford area, having worked at a nearby tobacco farm during the summer after his freshman year in college. He went on to trace the history of African Americans, from slavery, through emancipation and segregation, to the mid-1950s and the U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. “As a result of this decision,” he said, “we stand today on the threshold of the most creative and constructive period of our nation’s history.”
King outlined the roles that government, religious leaders, and others should play in the fight for integration and civil rights. He urged them to act quickly and decisively, noting that “The hour is late, the clock of destiny is ticking out.”
King also discussed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. “Violence can only bring temporary victory,” he said, “never permanent peace.”
University of Hartford President Walter Harrison said that King’s 1959 speech “forever connects this university to one of America’s greatest heroes, the foremost American statesman and visionary of the 20th century.”
Two audio excerpts from King’s University of Hartford speech are linked below. To hear more of the speech, contact University Archivist Margaret Mair at 860.768.4143, or mair@hartford.edu.
Audio Excerpts:
Clip 1: King discusses the impact of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. (Read the text of this excerpt.) Clip 2: King discusses his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. (Read the text of this excerpt.)
