Helping to Fulfill the Dream: Martin Luther King's Links to Smith

“The morning of Sunday, April 16, 1961, a plane landed at Bradley Field (now Bradley International Airport), and a passenger from Atlanta, Ga., disembarked for a destination a bit further north.”

So begins a 2009 blog post by college archivist Nanci Young about a visit to campus by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the time in the early 1960s, King was “possibly the most sought after speaker in the United States,” according to a Sophian story about King’s visit to Smith, during which he preached a sermon from the podium at Helen Hills Hills Chapel. Seven years later, the revered civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

Young’s blog post and other items from the college archives illustrate connections between King and the college that predate the 1986 establishment of a federal holiday in his honor.

King’s daughter, Yolanda King, graduated from Smith in 1976. An actress and producer, Yolanda King died in 2007 in California.

The collection also documents how teaching about social justice, as well as student and alumnae participation in civil rights work are Smith traditions that continue today.

Just days after King was assassinated in 1968, the college held a public memorial service that drew more than 2,000 people to John M. Greene Hall, the Sophian reported. During discussion that followed the service, Smith biology professor Sanat Majumder challenged participants to “develop a core of non-violent soldiers” to carry out King’s dream.

The archives reveal how mourning quickly turned to organizing at the college.

Classes were cancelled on the day of King’s funeral, and a mass meeting was called to provide “an opportunity for the entire Smith community to examine its priorities in light of the racial crisis,” Diane Kittredge ’68 wrote in the Summer 1968 Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

In her article, Kittredge—a leader of the Response Through Action, Commitment and Education Committee formed at Smith in the wake of King’s assassination—described the committee’s many activities in the months that followed.

Among them were:

• Creation of a Smith-Northampton summer tutorial program for “Negro and Puerto Rican students from Springfield”
• Organizing buses to send 50 Smith students to North Carolina to help with voter registration efforts
• Raising more than $11,000 for a new Martin Luther King Fund to provide financial support for “activities to help King’s dream of a reconciled society”
• Holding meetings with the college’s Board of Admission to “discuss policy and recruitment in hopes of achieving a more diversified Smith student body.”

In remarks made at the assembly in John M. Greene Hall, then college President Thomas Mendenhall noted that “living peacefully in Northampton,” it was difficult to comprehend newspaper photos of soldiers standing guard on the steps of the U.S. Capitol after riots broke out across the country following King’s death.

“Yet we must believe it,” Mendenhall said. “We as a college must realize that we can and must act … that we, the students, faculty and administration, must help to have the dreams of Martin Luther King fulfilled instead of deferred.”

This woodcut of Martin Luther King, Jr., by former Smith art professor Mervin Jules is among the items in the Smith College Archives that illustrate links between the college and the revered civil rights leader.