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Reclaiming a legacy

An unexpected discovery almost 50 years after Martin Luther King’s Mem Hall speech.

by Melanie Zuercher

In January 1960, the country and the world were only beginning to become aware of a man who within four years would be arguably the most famous living American. Some who had an early inkling were at Bethel College.

Among them was J. Lloyd Spaulding, professor of business and economics and the chair of the Memorial Hall Series committee in the latter part of the 1950s. Probably beginning in 1958, Spaulding began inviting the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta to join the “other distinguished Americans in religion and national life” who had been on the roster of speakers in the series since its inception in 1942. In January of 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. was finally able to fit the speaking engagement into his schedule.

Well before this, Lloyd and Blanche Spaulding had been avid readers of King – certainly in Fellowship, the magazine of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, probably in King’s 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom, written about the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956. “We had followed his writings,” Blanche Spaulding recalls. “If we knew he [had spoken] anywhere and that we might get a copy of the speech, we did.”

King was “an ideal of Lloyd’s,” Spaulding says (her husband died in 1995). “We had heard him speak a couple of times. His writings and speeches included what Lloyd would like to have said.”

Dr. Spaulding’s great interest in Dr. King had much to do with their shared belief in the power of nonviolence. After earning his undergraduate degree at Iowa State University, master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, after marrying Blanche in 1940, Spaulding was subject to the draft during World War II. He registered as a conscientious objector – raised a Methodist (not a “historic peace church”), from an Iowa community and draft board with little or no sympathy for his position. As a result, he had the unusual experience of serving prison time before eventually being paroled to a Civilian Public Service camp near Hagerstown, Md.

Like many of those who remember being at the faculty and board dinner for King the evening of Jan. 21, 1960, and his speech following, Blanche Spaulding recalls few details. “But I can still remember coming in the back of Mem Hall and walking down to find a seat,” she says. “It was an occasion. It was one of the high points of our time at Bethel.

“I can remember more intensely the anticipation,” she admits. “Not that the reality was any less, but I had built up such an aura around the man and his beliefs. I was deeply moved [to hear him in person] but I was so ready for it.”

And she was not disappointed, she says. “Even in the short time [of personal acquaintance], I was impressed with the fact that [Dr. King’s] life and presence were so absolutely like what you knew about him through his speeches and writings – it was very evident in his presence.”

John O. Schrag ’38, North Newton, was the chair of the Bethel College Board at the time. He and his wife, Esther ’38, sat on either side of King at the dinner, held in the basement of Mem Hall, which was then the dining hall. “I have vivid memories of having that access to him and being able to talk with him,” Schrag says.

“I’d forgotten how much animosity there was” in the wider community toward King, Schrag says. “Those were hard times.” Adds Spaulding, “I remember the enthusiasm at Bethel [for his coming] but also the question: What will happen?”

By all accounts, however, the event went smoothly. According to the 1960 Bethel College yearbook, Dr. King’s “forceful lecture, in which he stressed the importance of love and nonviolence in the future of the Negro movement toward equality and justice, was well received by a full house in Memorial Hall.”

By the time Martin Luther King came to Bethel, he had been a leader in the Montgomery bus boycott and helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Council (serving as its first president). But his speech predated the Civil Rights Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed in July 1964 and which prohibited discrimination of any kind based on race, color, religion or national origin. So in January 1960, there was no hotel in Newton where King could stay overnight – instead, he was a guest in the home of Russell Mast, then pastor of Bethel College Mennonite Church. Richard Rempel ’63, retired professor of mathematics, and his wife Erna ’62 now live in that former BCMC parsonage.

Richard Rempel, a Bethel student in 1960, attended the speech. He recalls exactly where he sat in Mem Hall, adding, “I remember the event clearly [and] his main themes. I’d read about [the Montgomery bus boycott]. It was exciting to hear him.”

For the past year, recognizing the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King speech at Bethel, planners have been working on a special program for the annual MLK holiday celebration, to be held on campus Jan. 18, 2010. And another student who attended that speech has produced an unexpected addition to the historical material available.

Newton native Randy Harmison ’61, who now lives near Erie, Kan., had long had an interest in audio-visual technology. As a teenage employee of Graber’s Hardware in Newton in the mid-’50s, Harmison had bought a VM (Voice of Music) reel-to-reel recorder through one of the store’s suppliers. “It was about the size of a small suitcase and weighed about 35 pounds,” he recalls. “[The folks at Graber’s] thought this was kind of a silly thing for me to have.”

Harmison liked to record events and programs “for future personal reference. When Martin Luther King was at Bethel, I thought, ‘This would be a good thing to archive,’ so I recorded it.

“Most of us on campus didn’t have any firsthand experience with the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement,” he adds, “but we knew it was a serious social problem.”

Fast forward almost 50 years, and Bethel College advancement staff put out the word to alumni asking for any memorabilia from the King speech in Mem Hall in January 1960. Harmison knew that he had never taped over his recording nor to his knowledge thrown it away. “I thought, ‘That tape has to be somewhere.’ I found it in [a storage shed]. It was sealed and intact. But my recorder was long gone so I couldn’t try to play it.” Instead, he sent it to Sondra Bandy Koontz ’70, Bethel vice president for advancement.

She consulted Adam Akers ’03, one of Bethel’s audio-visual department staff, who owns a reel-to-reel recorder/player, and John Thiesen ’82, co-director of libraries and director of the Mennonite Library and Archives.

Thiesen didn’t believe the tape was really a recording of the speech, says Akers, so “I played enough of it to determine that it really was that.” But because of the tape’s age and fragility, he says, he was afraid that to play it further would damage the machine and very probably destroy the tape.

“John said we needed to send it away,” Koontz says. “He contacted two companies but only one responded, The Cutting Corporation of Archival Sound Labs in Bethesda, Md.” The company specializes in restoring and preserving archival audio materials. The tape went to Maryland early in June and by the end of July it was back, with CDs of the King speech and the flip side, a radio broadcast of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, which Koontz gave to Harmison.

“I had recorded other events while at Bethel,” Harmison says, “but this one was the only one that survived. [As the book of Ecclesiastes says,] ‘there’s a time for every purpose under Heaven.’”

Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Bethel College was not the beginning of campus consciousness on civil rights issues – for example, the exchange with Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, was already in place before he came (see below), and Bethel faculty and administration had already spoken and acted in the community on their belief in the need for racial equality in all aspects of American life.

There’s small doubt, however, that King’s brief presence on campus would continue to send out ripples over the next pivotal years in the American Civil Rights movement and into the present.

Dwight Platt ’52, a young professor of biology in 1960, with his wife Lavonne and their infant son, would be part of the historic March on Washington, where King gave his “I have a dream” speech, Aug. 28, 1963. In March 1965, Platt along with 21 college students, most from Bethel, and Dolores Wedel ’75, Adolf Ens, instructor in Bible, and Vern Preheim ’57, then working for the General Conference Mennonite Church, took part in a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in support of black voter registration. Ruth Ewy White ’63 would work alongside King as a civil rights worker with the SCLC at Ebenezer Baptist Church, of which King became co-pastor in 1960. And because of his friendship with White, Henrik Eger, 1964-65 Wuppertal exchange student, would serve as a translator of German-language letters sent to King after he won the Nobel Peace Prize (see Perspective).

Duane Friesen ’62, professor emeritus of Bible and religion who taught at Bethel for 35 years, was also in the audience for King’s Mem Hall speech, and King would remain an important influence for Friesen throughout his teaching career. Friesen’s book Artists, Citizens, Philosophers: Seeking the Peace of the City (Herald Press, 2000) holds King up as a theological and intellectual model.

“I used King’s writings over and over in my classes,” says Friesen. “It’s hard to remember the details [of Jan. 21, 1960] but what was more important was what came later.”

Recalling how she felt when she learned that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, eight years after he spoke at Bethel, Blanche Spaulding says, “[It was] a horrible experience [to learn that he was gone]. But we had read, and listened to, and talked and thought about, his beliefs for so long. You couldn’t just shut that off when he was gone.”

Remembrances by Anna Marie Peterson ’61, Spelman College exchange student, second semester 1959-60

The exchange program helped me focus on the meaning of living a purposeful life. Most of my professional career was spent in the field of literacy programs. It was in these programs I felt I could possibly make a difference in a student’s life.

The courage of the civil rights workers and the results of their nonviolent actions showed the world there is a peaceful way to make change. To have been part of the Spelman interchange was a part of history that helped shape my life.

November, 1959
Martha Thiessen [’62] and I were selected by a faculty committee for a cultural student interchange with Spelman College in Atlanta (Dr. Lloyd Spaulding was the chairman of the faculty interchange committee at Bethel).

January 21, 1960
We were privileged to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak on the Bethel College campus. At the conclusion of the program, Martha and I were privileged to meet a very warm individual, interested in the idea of an interchange program.

January 24, l960
Howard Zinn and our new Spelman roommates met us at the Atlanta train station. On our way to the Spelman campus, we were refused service at a drive-in food establishment because we were a “mixed group.”

March 9, 1960
A document titled “An Appeal for Human Rights” appeared in the Atlanta Constitution (written by leaders in the six colleges in the University Center). Six days later, there were carefully planned sit-down demonstrations in different eating establishments. My roommate was one of the students refused service. While as exchange students we were not allowed to participate in the sit-ins, we were allowed to help picket at a local grocery store chain. That action prompted questions by the police as well as comments by people driving by. (Weeks later, we learned the boycott was successful.)

May 17, 1960
On the anniversary of the 1954 Supreme Court decision [Brown v. Board of Education], we participated in a march through downtown Atlanta to the Wheat Street Baptist Church where leaders, including Dr. King, addressed the body of students. The theme of each speech centered on the use of nonviolence to gain equality.

Excerpt from a March 30, 1960, letter from Anna Marie Peterson to J. Lloyd Spaulding:
“Martha and I both feel very much at home here in the Deep South. We are enjoying every moment of our very rich experience. To be in a section of the country where news is being made every day, to see it covering the front pages of newspapers, to read the many editorials in each morning and evening papers, to see it on the television, to hear it in many news broadcasts, this all adds to our knowledge of our great experience. We, as exchange students from the three colleges from the Midwest, can see much of this news every day with incidents and many happenings that reach the front page and those that do not.”