The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
City has connection to MLK
A proclamation delivered at the Jan. 7 Oberlin City Council meeting highlighted the connection between the municipality and the late civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The annual proclamation was in observance of the national holiday Jan. 21 and highlighted that King made many trips to the city and received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters in 1965 from Oberlin College in a ceremony that also saw him giving a keynote speech titled “Remaining Awake Through a Revolution.”
The city first began celebrating King’s birthday in 1971, about 15 years before the national government observed the holiday, according to the proclamation.
Oberlin hosts a celebration of King’s life each year.
This year’s event will start at 12:15 p.m. in Martin Luther King Jr. Park, at the corner of South Pleasant and Vine streets.
The event will include a traditional memorial ceremony consisting of shared readings and song.
A Community Tea will follow at Mount Zion Fellowship Hall, 47 Locust St.
King’s connection
Liz Schultz, executive director of the Oberlin Heritage Center, said the traceable parts of King’s relationship with the city are mainly in his connection to the college.
The Oberlin College Archive indicates the 1965 visit was not King’s first sojourn to campus, having made visits in 1957, 1963 and 1964.
That initial visit Feb. 6, 1957, caused a stir on the campus .
A Feb. 12, 1957, story in The Oberlin Review written by Kim Beach said the raucous applause that followed his speech titled, “The Montgomery Story,” was a mix of cheers for the man and a certain unease with his religious tone.
The speech told the story of Rosa Parks’ arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man and the bus boycotts that followed.
Parks was arrested on a Thursday.
By the time of her trial on the following Monday, no black passengers were riding the bus, which King said made up about 75 percent of riders.
“The story of Montgomery is the story of 50,000 Negroes who are tired of injustice and oppression, and who discovered that it is ultimately more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation,” King said.
“So they were willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk courageously until the sagging walls of segregation were finally crushed by the battering rams of surging justice.”
Beach’s article following the speech said the students were unfamiliar and taken aback by King’s Christian themes.
“The point of this discussion is that in Dr. King’s Address Oberlin students the novel opportunity to discover a case in which emotional and religious convictions have led a man to conclusions which tend to be associated only with a cool rationalism in the Oberlin environment, and led him to them in such a way as to make him a leader of an immensely significant movement,” Beach wrote.
King’s other visits
King’s visit in 1963 was truncated by his catching the flu before arrival and only speaking for about two minutes in Finney Chapel.
A website associated with the college’s archives said the short address was followed by a three-minute standing ovation.
King’s visit in 1964, only his second public appearance after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, featured a speech titled, “The Future of Integration,” was heard by an estimated 2,500 students, staff, faculty and visitors.
Around this time, letters recommending King for an honorary degree began coming into the college.
One letter from William F. Hellmuth, who later was appointed deputy assistant secretary of U.S. Treasury, dated May 4, 1964, ties the work of King to the core of the college’s values.
“Rev. Kings’ contribution is in the mainstream of Oberlin’s tradition,” Hellmuth wrote.
At the time he received the doctorate from Oberlin, King already had received 18 honorary degrees including from Harvard and Yale.
In his presentation of the degree to King on June 14, 1965, J. Milton Yinger, professor of sociology and anthropology at Oberlin College, spoke about the impact King’s work had, not only on black people, but on the nation as a whole.
“The man I present to you is not a Negro leader only,” he said.
“In attacking the shameful walls which our society has erected, he has helped to free white men from their confinement in a severely limiting situation.
“He has helped to open the south to the world; but more importantly, he has decisively shown that this is one nation, and indeed one world.”
King’s impact
Oberlin City Council Member Ronnie Rimbert, 64, was about 11 years old when his mother, Eva Rimbert, dragged him to hear King’s commencement speech.
Rimbert previously told The Morning Journal that King’s speech had a profound effect on him.
“As time passed and I got older and started to evaluate things, you know, Martin Luther King was talking about nonviolence; Malcolm X was talking differently than that,” he said. “And then I saw Malcolm X coming over toward Martin Luther King and saying, ‘the best way to do this is nonviolent.’”
The relationship between Oberlin College and King seemed to be mutually beneficial as well.
In a letter dated about a week before he received the honorary degree, King thanked the college for its $179 donation to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; which he served as president.
Also, in a letter dated Nov. 30, 1966, King recommends a Susan Wachtel for the college’s Conservatory.
In the letter, he said he’d written a similar recommendation for an Alan Wachtel, now a psychiatrist in upstate New York.
“While I am not qualified to evaluate Susan’s talent as a violinist, I am convinced that she and Oberlin will benefit from one another,” King wrote.
“I know Susan personally and can affirm that her talents and interests are many, including that special ingredient – a deep commitment to humanism.”