MLK Beloved Community Award
The MLK Beloved Community Award recognizes and celebrates members of the UHart community whose actions exemplify and honor the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the Beloved Community.Dr. King envisioned a society grounded in justice, equal opportunity, and love for one another. Through his words and leadership, he called on us to create positive change, listen deeply, learn from diverse perspectives, and take meaningful action. His legacy continues to inspire us to build a more inclusive and compassionate community.
The Office of Inclusive Excellence and Belonging invites members of the UHart community to recognize a deserving Hawk who demonstrates these values through their actions and contributions.
Nominations for the 2027 MLK Beloved Community Award are now open.
UHart Honors the Life and Legacy of Dr. King
The University of Hartford commemorates the prominent life and achievements of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was born on January 15, 1929, and was assassinated, at the age of 39, on April 4, 1968. A champion of non-violent civil disobedience, racial equality, and social justice, King provided an unwavering commitment to justice that helped lead the American Civil Rights Movement and transformed the nation.
King was born into a long tenure of pastors. Both his grandfather and father were pastors at Baptist churches. King would later himself become a co-pastor until his death in 1968. Prior to becoming a co-pastor, King graduated high school at the age of 15 from Georgia’s first high school for black students, Booker T. Washington High School. In the summer of 1944, at 15 years old, King journeyed closer to home in Simsbury, Connecticut. During this time, he worked at a farm where he picked tobacco to earn money to attend Morehouse University.
King’s travels to Connecticut emphasized the plight of black people in America; while traveling he had to sit in “colored” train cars until he reached Washington, D.C. where he was finally able to switch seats. This experience would be his first lived experience without segregation. While in Simsbury, King wrote letters home about his experiences in the North stating, “On the way here we saw things I never anticipated to see. After we passed Washington, there was no discrimination at all. … We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.”
A memorial to King is located in Simsbury and the tobacco farm land where he worked is protected space. King would later visit Simsbury for a second time before finishing college. He received his Bachelor of Art degree from Morehouse College, a historically black, men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1948. King would later receive his doctorate degree in systemic theology from Boston University. His time in Connecticut as well as his religious and educational upbringing influenced his journey to becoming an activist and influential figure in the American Civil Rights Movement.
King first became involved in the Civil Rights Movement through the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955. These boycotts were a mass protest that arose from the arrest of Rosa Parks and concluded after over a year with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional to have segregation on public buses. Prior to the bus boycotts, King was a member of the executive committee of the NAACP, preparing him for his involvement in the boycotts and many more movements. He would later lead many notable protests and marches including his famous August 28, 1963, March on Washington where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Through his work, King raised awareness around civil rights, social injustice, and economic inequality throughout the nation.
In 1964, King accepted the Nobel Peace Prize “for his non-violent struggle for civil rights for the Afro-American population,” presented by Gunnar Jahn, chairman of the Nobel Committee. In his acceptance speech, he noted the racial injustices occurring in the United States and accepted the award on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement. At this time, King became the youngest person to accept this honor. On December 11, 1964, King delivered his Nobel Lecture titled “The Quest for Peace and Justice.” A transcript of this lecture can be found on the Nobel Prize organization’s website.
King’s work brought him to the University of Hartford in 1959 when Hillyer College invited him to deliver one of the lectures in the University’s Alexander S. Keller Memorial Fund Lecture series at Bushnell Memorial Hall. King delivered one of his speeches, “The Future of Integration,” which spoke on the historical and societal barriers to racial integration. The Keller Lectures’ press releases, transcripts, and recordings including Q&A sessions are newly digitized and available for researchers to use in the University’s Harrison Libraries.
As heard on a recording of the 1959 speech, King tells the Hartford audience, “…What we need (is) a committed liberalism - one where individuals stand up on basic principles and give themselves to the right side of this issue realizing that right is right and wrong is wrong and never the twain shall meet. This is something we must do."
Many renowned civil rights events followed King’s speech in Hartford including non-violent lunch counter sit-ins, school desegregation cases, freedom riders who took bus trips to the south to protest segregated restrooms and lunch counters, the March on Washington, and the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. In July 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law with King in attendance.
In honor and rememberence of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the University of Hartford hosts its annual observance program.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (1929–1968)There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.