 "On our way here we saw some things I had never anticipated to see,"
he wrote his father in June 1944. "After we passed Washington, there
was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice.
We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to."The
slain civil rights leader, whose birthday is observed Monday as a
federal holiday, spent that summer working in a tobacco field in the
Hartford suburb of Simsbury. That experience would influence his
decision to become a minister and would heighten his resentment of
segregation.
"It's clear that this little town, it made a huge impact on his
life," said John Conard-Malley, a Simsbury High School senior who
did a documentary with other students on King's experiences in
Connecticut.
"It's possibly the biggest thing, one of the most important
things, people don't know about Martin Luther King's life," he said.
Until then, King was thinking of other professions, such as
becoming a lawyer, Conard-Malley said. But after his fellow
Morehouse College students at the tobacco farm elected him their
religious leader, he decided to become a minister.
In his later application to Crozer Theological Seminary, King
wrote that he made the decision that summer, "when I felt an
inescapable urge to serve society. In short, I felt a sense of
responsibility which I could not escape."
"Perhaps if he hadn't come to Connecticut, hadn't picked tobacco
up here, hadn't felt like a free person, hadn't felt what life was
like without segregation and been elected the religious minister, he
may not have become such a leader in the civil rights movement,"
Conard-Malley said.
Nicole Byer, a junior at Simsbury High School who narrates the
documentary, noted that King was roughly the same age as the
students who produced the documentary. Such early experiences can
have a profound influence on young people, she said.
"Everything right now influences us," Byer said. "Any small
experience can change the direction of what we do right now."
In a letter to his mother three days after he wrote to his
father, King marveled over a trip he took to Hartford.
"I never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere, but
we ate in one of the finest restaurants in Hartford," King wrote.
"And we went to the largest shows there."
He wrote a week earlier of going to the same church in Simsbury
as white people. His new calling as a religious leader was emerging,
too.
"I have to speak on some text every Sunday to 107 boys. We really
have good meetings," he wrote.
William Duschaneck, an 88-year-old Simsbury resident interviewed
by the students, said he played baseball with King in town. King was
a strong pitcher, though the future preacher of nonviolence never
drilled a batter, he said.
"He was a good ballplayer. He beat us a couple times," Duschanek
told The Associated Press, laughing. "It was interesting to hear him
talk. He had a nice voice. He talked about God and so forth."
King described the work on the tobacco farm as easy.
"I have a job in the kitchen, so I get better food than any of
the boys and more. I get as much as I want," he wrote to his mother.
[to top of second column] |
In a speech in Hartford in 1959, King recalled how hot it was
working on the tobacco field and how he looked forward to relaxing
on weekends in Hartford.
Byer says King and other students often worked in temperatures
that reached 100 degrees or higher. The students, who were earning
money to pay for college, made about $4 per day, Byer said. They
lived in a dormitory built at the edge of the tobacco field.
King was nicknamed "Tweed" by his friends because he often wore a
tweed suit to church, said Alexis Kellam, whose late father, Ennis
Proctor, worked with King that summer in Connecticut.
King's friends teased him that the hot sun in the tobacco fields
caused him to preach, his sister, Christine Farris, told The AP.
In her book "Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family,
and My Faith," Ferris wrote that her brother underwent a
"metamorphosis" as a result of his time in Connecticut.
"That was quite an experience," Farris said.
King's widow, Coretta Scott King, wrote in her memoir, "My Life
With Martin Luther King Jr.," that her husband talked of the
exhilarating sense of freedom he felt in Connecticut that summer.
That taste of freedom ended as King returned home. When he got to
Washington, he had to ride the rest of the way to Atlanta in a
segregated train.
"After that summer in Connecticut, it was a bitter feeling going
back to segregation," King wrote in his autobiography. "I could
never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places,
separate restrooms, partly because the separate was always unequal
and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my
sense of dignity and self-respect."
Clayborne Carson, a history professor and director of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford
University, said King's time in Connecticut played a role in his
decision to become a minister and influenced his views about
segregation. He said that shortly before King came to Connecticut
that summer, a bus driver had ordered him to give up his seat for a
white passenger on the way to Atlanta.
"These experiences came fairly close to each other," Carson said.
"I think the two things together sharpened his sense of resentment
about segregation in the South."
[Associated Press;
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN]
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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