Return to Past Lecturers PageFor years the Assembly Series has been an important part of campus life at Washington University, offering the University community an opportunity to hear some of the most important figures of the time. If anyone could have a wish list of past and present people to hear speak, Martin Luther King, Jr. would almost surely be at the top of that list. Fortunately, Washington University actually had the honor of presenting the late civil rights leader. Over 40 years ago, in 1957, King himself delivered an Assembly Series lecture in Graham Chapel.
Fresh from leading the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, King delivered his address here Dec. 4, 1957. The charismatic civil rights crusader, then just 28 years old, spoke about the nation's journey toward the "promised land of integration."
Forty years after the lecture, Marvin Osborn, creator and director of the Assembly Series at the time of King's visit, remembers the experience vividly. "He spoke with the intelligence of a professor, with the sincerity of a minister, and with the commitment of a man willing to lose his life for the cause of brotherhood," Osborn said. "He moved me like no other speaker ever has emotionally." Osborn served at Washington University during the 1950s as Director of Information and later as Director of Public Relations and of Funds Development. After years of service as a higher education consultant, he is currently retired and living in Jacksonville, Florida.
The content of King's lecture was documented in Student Life's follow-up article. The lecture opened with the University Choir's presentation of the final course of Honnegger's "King David," after which King took the stage. In his opening remarks, King proclaimed his belief that "we are on the threshold of the most constructive period of our nation's history." He went on to describe the times in the broad context of American history, outlining three periods in race relations in the United States -- slavery, the separate-but-equal era from 1863 to 1954 and the then-new period of what he called "constructive integration." He went on to say: "I believe firmly that we are going to achieve the goals of the third period. I have faith in the future because I have faith in God."
King challenged the audience not to rest until segregation was gone and asserted the special responsibility of black Americans to keep working to achieve their goals without becoming bitter or resorting to violence. Student Life reported King's closing remarks: "If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl, but by all means keep moving."
The decision to bring Martin Luther King, Jr. was made by the Assembly Series Committee, much as it is done today, although in 1957, the committee was made up entirely of students. Osborn recalls that not only were the students interested in King's work in the Montgomery boycott; they were interested as well in the fact that a man who was not much older than they were was leading a crusade for better racial relations.
When Osborn invited King to the University, he was impressed by King's eagerness in accepting. "I think that he really wanted to speak to young people because he felt that they represented the future of the country in terms of the decisions to be made later. He also had not spoken in St. Louis before, and he may have felt that St. Louis, which was home to the Dred Scott decision, was an important town to get his message across outside of the South." The infamous Dred Scott ruling had defined African Americans essentially as property, not citizens.
Three prominent St. Louis hotels refused to accommodate King during his visit. "These hotels, upon hearing that he was an African American, all found reasons to say that they were filled up on that date," Osborn recalled. "It was the fourth hotel we called, the Chase Park Plaza, that finally said, 'We would be privileged to have him as our guest.'"
Upon meeting King, who was then only addressed as "Reverend," Osborn remembers thinking that this was a man of great focus who possessed a powerful idea. King was eager to discuss his mission with Osborn and spoke about his recent experiences in Montgomery. King seemed impressed with the campus and its architecture. He was interested in the School of Social Work and also in the presence of a chapel.
King's lecture, delivered to a capacity crowd, seemed to have a powerful effect on those in attendance, Osborn recalled. It had been only five years earlier, in 1952, that the University changed its policy to accept African-American undergraduates, and it was still in the process of desegregating many of its extracurricular and social activities, giving particular relevance to King's lecture.
"When our committee met after his visit," Osborn said, "there was obvious pride among the students, and I felt it myself. We felt that we had done something good for the University and good for the cause of Dr. King. It was dramatic to all of us who attended the lecture, because we were exposed to a speech that gave us a lot more information than we had previously and that I think won a lot of converts to the ideas that he was proposing." -- Ryan Rhea, 1999
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