MLK Day 35th ann’y
NYC WAS SPECIAL PLACE FOR KING
Today marks the 35th anniversary of Martin Luther King Day, a celebration of the beloved leader of the modern U.S. civil rights movement and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize-winner.
King is the only nonpresident to have a national holiday dedicated in his honor, and New York holds a special place for him in its heart. King made dozens of trips here from around 1950 until his death, delivering speeches and sermons to clubs, politicians, parishioners, labor leaders, police officers and thousands who looked to him for hope and strength. Here are just a few of the places where his memory will never fade.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. BLVD.
On Sept. 20, 1958, at 230 W. 125th St. in Harlem, King was signing copies of his book “Stride Toward Freedom” at the packed Blumstein department store when a mentally disturbed woman stabbed him in the chest with a steel letter opener. The near-fatal incident struck a chord in the city, with hundreds of New Yorkers dialing the Daily News out of concern for the 29-year-old Baptist minister.
Gov. W. Averell Harriman visited King at Harlem Hospital (which later named its Lenox Ave. pavilion after the reverend) and the city’s police commissioner said he took personal charge over the investigation. The street was renamed after King in 1984 — one of more than 1,000 streets worldwide that bear his name.
RIVERSIDE CHURCH
King delivered at least six speeches between August 1961 and April 1967 at the renowned Riverside Church in Morningside Heights. Among these sermons were “Knock at Midnight,” “The Man Who Was a Fool,” and the famed “Beyond Vietnam,” which he gave on April 4, 1967 — exactly one year before his assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Recordings of these speeches have since been published by the King Institute at Stanford University.
The reverend also preached at a number of other city churches over the years, including First Baptist Church in Queens, Harlem’s Friendship Baptist Church, Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights.
PARK SHERATON HOTEL
The reverend gave a 26-minute speech at the Park Sheraton Hotel on Sept. 12, 1962, to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. In his remarks, King reflected on the previous 100 years and laid out his vision for the future of civil rights, saying the only way to move forward “is to make its declaration of freedom real, to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
LEWISOHN STADIUM IN HARLEM
On June 12, 1963, King delivered the City College commencement address at Lewisohn Stadium on
Convent Ave. between 136th to 138th Sts.
“Tonight you bid farewell to the friendly security of this academic environment and prepare to enter the clamorous highways of life,” he told the school’s graduating class just hours after civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi.
“As you move out in your various fields of endeavor, you will be moving into a world of catastrophic change and calamitous uncertainty. Indeed we live in a day of grave crisis. The crisis of this age presents a real challenge to all men of goodwill . ... We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”
The remarks also came just weeks before his historic “I Have a Dream” speech at the Aug. 28 March on Washington.
CITY HALL
Mayor Robert Wagner presented King with the City of New York Medallion of Honor on Dec. 17, 1964, a week after King was awarded the Nobel Peace Price at the University of Oslo in Norway.
“Dr. King, with this historic symbol of our city goes the abiding admiration of all our citizens for you, for the movement you champion and for the ideals of brotherhood and peace which you so nobly advance,” Wagner said during the ceremony.
King responded by saying, “These joyous moments are experienced not for myself alone, but for all those courageous devotees of nonviolence . ... These noble people for whom I accept these honors are the real heroes of the freedom struggle. Many of them are young and cultured, others are middle-aged and middle class. They include both white people and Negroes. The majority are poor and untutored. All, however, are united in the firm conviction that segregation is evil and they will not stop until total freedom is won.”
CARNEGIE HALL
King served as the keynote speaker at Carnegie Hall Feb. 23, 1968 to celebrate the 100th birthday of the late civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. In what would be one of his final speeches before his assassination six weeks later, King said, “Dr. DuBois has left us, but he has not died. The spirit of freedom is not buried in the grave of the valiant.”
BUILDINGS, PARKS AND STATUES
There are a number of places and spaces where the city pays tribute to King. Among them are Martin Luther King Jr. Community Park at Montgomery and Henry Streets on the Lower East Side; the Martin Luther King Jr. Educational Campus at Lincoln Square; the Martin Luther King Jr. Playground in East New York, Brooklyn; the Martin Luther King Jr. Triangle in Mott Haven, the Bronx; Martin Luther King Jr. Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and a bust of King at Brooklyn College in Midwood.
There are also several locations in Harlem that honor the late reverend, including Martin Luther King Jr. Towers and its neighboring playground near 115th St. and Malcolm X Blvd., and a 1970 bust of King at Esplanade Gardens with a plaque featuring words from “I Have a Dream.”