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Three weeks before he was assassinated in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. made one of his last speeches to a Michigan audience. And not just any audience; he went deep into the belly of the segregated beast, speaking to an audience at Grosse Pointe High School on March 14, 1968.
After 2 months of tense deliberation,
the school board finally voted 5-2 to allow the speech at the school, but only after taking out a $1 million insurance policy against damages to the building and grounds.
the school board finally voted 5-2 to allow the speech at the school, but only after taking out a $1 million insurance policy against damages to the building and grounds.
Martin Luther King Jr. missed his flight and would be an hour late.
The predominately white crowd of supporters and hecklers that gathered at Grosse Pointe High School for the speech was growing hostile by the minute.
The predominately white crowd of supporters and hecklers that gathered at Grosse Pointe High School for the speech was growing hostile by the minute.
Security was such a concern King was driven to the event with the Grosse Pointe Farms chief of police sitting in his lap.
Relief didn’t come until King approached the stage, where a noisy crowd of 2,700 looked on.
“The audience came to their feet in a cheer that could have been heard a mile away.”
“The audience came to their feet in a cheer that could have been heard a mile away.”
But also among them were more than 100 protesters. It was an organized effort on the part of a local right-wing group called Breakthrough. They heckled King, interrupting him a number of times, especially as he spoke about his opposition to the war in Vietnam.
King’s speech, “The Other America,” began innocently enough. He explained that black children weren’t reaching their potential because of the deplorable learning environment. The speech was aimed at a white suburban audience. He urged supporters to stand up and oppose inequality.
“Until (racism) is removed, there will be people walking the streets, living in their humble dwellings feeling that they are nobody, feeling that they have no dignity and feeling that they are not respected,” King said.
King was assassinated 3 weeks later. There was an undercover FBI agent in the audience. The FBI report on James Earl Ray placed him in Windsor that week of March 14. Maybe he was there that night. We will never know. If so, they only postponed the inevitable.
