By Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
Sixty years ago, one of the most important figures in United States history stepped onto Alden Street. On June 14, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the Springfield College commencement address. In honor of the day, there have been 10 annual MLK lectures. The 11th will take place on March 5 in the Fuller Arts Center at 7 p.m.
Instead of a traditional lecture, this year’s event will be an interactive multimedia panel discussion about King’s influence on the modern world. The lecture is titled “MLK, Patriotism, and the State of Our Democracy.” Both were themes that were important in King’s time and still relevant in the present-day.
Leading up to the speech, it was unclear whether King would be able to make it. Glenn Olds, the president of Springfield College at the time, was being pressured by the FBI to turn away from King. Despite this, Olds recognized the importance of having King and kept him as the commencement speaker.
Another concern was King’s arrest – three days before he was scheduled to speak at Springfield – for violating Florida’s unwanted guest law for ordering food from a whites-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Fla. He was allowed to leave and arrived in Springfield under heavy police guard to deliver the 78th annual commencement at Springfield College.
This year’s MLK lecture will be conversation-based and will feature three panelists and a moderator. One of them is Springfield College professor Martin Dobrow. Dobrow, who has written extensively about King and the Civil Rights movement, recognizes how important King’s commencement speech is to the school’s history.
“It’s important that this lecture happens, because it’s such an important part of the college’s history,” Dobrow said. “He came right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement despite the extraordinary circumstances. It’s an amazing story of Springfield College history and American history.”
Dr. Calvin Hill, the college’s Vice President for Inclusion and Community engagement, will be the conversation’s moderator. In this role Hill will start the dialogue about King’s importance to Springfield College and offer the audience a chance to join the conversation. Hill acknowledges how essential it is to hold the lecture.
“For me, continuing to keep that legacy and engagement is absolutely critical,” Hill said. “I’m excited to be part of the process on campus of keeping it going.”
Joining Dobrow as a panelist is Mark Updegrave, the president and CEO of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and the ABC News presidential historian. Updegrave has interviewed several key figures in history, including seven U.S. presidents. His role in the panel will be to help understand the intersection between history and the current events of the world.
The last panelist is Robyn Spencer-Antoine, a historian and scholar at Harvard University. Spencer-Antoine has written about the Black freedom struggle, specifically the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers Organization. She will offer a current perspective to the dialogue while also looking back at the past.
Excited about his fellow panelists, Dobrow referred to Updegrove as “Extraordinarily well spoken and very entertaining” while noting that Spencer-Antoine is going to make “great contributions to the conversation.”
Springfield College has a significant civil rights history. The very first graduate when the school became a four-year institution William Bec was an African American. Japanese Americans were brought out of internment camps and educated at Springfield College during World War II. And the school hosted Martin Luther King Jr. in the peak of the civil rights movement.
The presentation will have six parts that consist of hearing speeches, seeing social political engagement, and the panelists providing context on patriotism and the state of democracy during King’s time. The event will be presented by the Division of Inclusion and Community Engagement, and is open to the public.