Herbert and Jean McKinstry clearly remember the atmosphere of the 1960s in State College, especially incidents of bigotry and injustice toward members of the black community.

But the McKinstrys also remember the high points of the civil rights movement as it affected State College and the University community.

And they vividly recall the historical speech the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. presented to a crowd of 9,000 at Rec Hall on Jan. 21, 1965. The University this week celebrated King's 61st birthday and the 25th anniversary of that speech here.

"(It) was very positive . . . (he) said things that needed to be said," Jean McKinstry said. Calling King a prophet, she said King's ideas were like those of the present-day peacemaker Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"I was impressed with the quality of the words of his speech," he said, describing King's inspiring words made in 1965. "His ideas were world shaking."

One of the forces behind black-student recruitment during the 1960s and 1970s was the Southern Student Project, designed to bring students from the South to State College to attend Penn State.

Active members of the project, the McKinstrys worked to bring black students from the South to the University and change some of the disappointing attitudes they found upon their arrival here from New York in 1947.

"There were palpable tensions in 1965 in the stores and theaters," Jean McKinstry said, adding that the 29,000-person community seemed more closed than she thought it would be.

One element behind the attitudes may have been the low enrollment numbers for black students during the 1960s. But Henry McKinstry, a University associate professor, said more black students are attending the University now and the overall State College population has increased by more than 6,000.

In 1968, 200 of the 28,173 students attending the University were black. The next year, the enrollment increased by 110. Currently, black student enrollment at the University is 1,360 out of 37,623 students on campus, said Aaron Singleton, a University spokesman.

This project helped to increase black-student enrollment on campus during the mid-1960s, Herbert said.

"I got involved with the project because I thought it might be a way to help blacks get into school," he said.

The program also helped increase the awareness of black Americans' historical contributions.

"Students learned names of black figures that textbooks ignored," said Jean McKinstry, who now serves on the Affirming Diversity in State College Community committee. Participants of the program stayed with families and became a part of those families, she said.

"The project raised consciousness," she said. It was a "real awakening" of the tensions of the South and the rest of the country, she added.

The first two students to take part in the program were from Tuscaloosa, Ala., Herbert said. The Southern Student Project also helped with fair housing for families who wanted to reside in the State College area.

In a special project, the organization helped fund hospital bills for Louis Ashley, civil rights worker from Louisiana.

Ashley had stopped in State College in 1965 on a trip to Washington, D.C., where he was to join a group challenging the seating of the Mississippi congressional delegation.

Herbert McKinstry remembers Ashley's "magnificent voice" as the civil rights worker sang in the Eisenhower Chapel during his visit to the area.

"Music is the mechanism of getting people to feel," he said. Through singing spirituals, Ashley was capable of making one feel the emotions of the events happening in the South, he said.

Herbert spent two to three weeks in the South during the civil rights movement helping blacks register to vote. Remembering those weeks, he recalled once walking along a highway where a black person had been shot.

"You could feel the hate as you walked along the road," he said.

Both Herbert and Jean McKinstry said they experienced a similar atmosphere of hate when they came to State College. During the 1960s, some downtown barbershops refused to serve black residents in a policy similar to the Jim Crow laws of the South.

The McKinstrys said they joined with others in picketing the barber shops, which led to the eventual elimination of the Jim Crow policies.