Former students, staff recall King's speech

By Katy Carpenter
Collegian staff writer

On a winter's night in State College on Jan. 21, 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived at University Park airport, prepared to give a lecture on "The Future of Integration."

An audience of about 9,000 packed into the newly renovated Rec Hall to hear the 1964 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize speak as part of the University's Artist and Lecture series.

As Robert Dunham, former senior vice president of Penn State, recalls, King made a late entrance because of a long press conference.

When King came onto the stage, the audience — a mix of students, faculty and townspeople — gave the 1963 Time magazine "man of the year" a standing ovation.

As the audience came to a hush, King went right to the theme of his speech.

"We have come a long, long way in the struggle for racial justice, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved," King said.

During his 45-minute address, King traced the history of the African American from his arrival in 1619.

"He commanded the audience," Dunham said.

King displayed the status of blacks in slavery by citing the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, which said "the Negro has no rights the white man is bound to respect."

Then King described the changes that allowed blacks to travel more — the automobile, two World Wars and the Great Depression. "All of these forces conjoined to cause the Negro to take a new look at himself," King said. "The Negro came to feel that he was somebody."

This new attitude brought about national changes such as an increase in African-American voter registration, the cessation of lynchings, an increase in African-American wages, the downfall of the "separate but equal" doctrine and the "strong" 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to King.

"The system of segregation is on its deathbed today," King said. "The only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists will make the funeral."

But King did not end there.

"I'm afraid that if I stopped at this point I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism," King said.

He went on to explain the problems that had yet to be solved.

King discussed the murders of civil rights workers, the burning of churches in Mississippi and the unregistered voting status of two-thirds of eligible southern blacks.

To combat these evils, King called for federal actions and public works programs.

King returned to the issue of segregation and reminded his audience that it was still with them.

"We still confront it, certain places in the South, in its glaring and conspicuous forms," King said. "We still confront it in the North in its hidden and subtle forms."

Before segregation could be destroyed, King said two myths must be debunked.

One was the notion that only time could solve the problem, King said. But time is neutral, according to King.

"We must help time and we must constantly realize that the time is always right to do right," King said.

The other myth was that legislation could not help.

To this, King said it may be "true that the law can't make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me and I think that's pretty important!"

Stressing his platform of nonviolence based on the methods of Mahatma Ghandi, King explained that nonviolence is the key in the fight for civil rights.

Nonviolence has a way of disarming the opponent, King said. "It exposes his moral defenses, weakens his morale, and, at the same time, it works on his conscience."

King's final statement was reminiscent of his well-known "I Have a Dream" speech given during the March on Washington, D.C., in 1963.

"With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children, all over this nation, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' " King said in Rec Hall.

King's conclusion brought the crowd to its feet once again.

"He gave a tremendous speech," Dunham said. "It was really quite a performance."

In the editorial opinion column of the following day's issue of The Daily Collegian, Editor John R. Thompson remarked, "Last night's address by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspiring and thought-provoking message from one of the great men of our time."

The speech touched Thompson and other members of the crowd.

There were "tears in the eyes of many persons in last night's audience as they left the auditorium," Thompson wrote.

For those who were not able to attend, a live broadcast of the speech was made on the campus radio station, WDFM.

John Frantz, associate professor of history emeritus, listened to it and recalled that even on the radio, King conveyed his charisma.

"He was animated. His voice rose and fell," Frantz said. "You could just picture him."

Following the speech, there was a brief question-and-answer period during which King responded to questions about the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley, and a comparison of the desegregation in the South vs. that of the North.

On integration, King predicted that within the next five years the nation would be legally desegregated, but that true integration may not come before the turn of the century.

"We have come a long, long way in the struggle for racial justice," King said three years before his assassination in Memphis, Tenn. "But we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved."