TOUCHING TALE: Young MLK up North (where he saw The Promised Land?)

1/20/11

[Liz]

According to CBS News, a documentary has been produced about the youthful Martin Luther King's summers in Simsbury Connecticut, working on a tobacco plantation.

Students attending MLK's alma mater, Morehouse College, were offered jobs to help pay tuition. At the time Morehouse College, Atlanta, was the only all-male historically black institution of higher learning in the United States.

The student jobs were on a tobacco plantation, up North----in Simsbury Connecticut.

At the age of 15, then again at age 18, MLK came to Simsbury to work. The charismatic MLK was elected religious advisor by the student workforce.

He said later that was where he formed his ambition to become a minister.

In letters he wrote home, MLK marveled at how blacks and white attended the same church. And that he, as a black man, could travel anywhere and eat in public restaurants----unusual practices in the segregated South.

(NOTE: Northeners endured criticism for their ambivalence about segregation laws---but one could conclude that this was because they, themselves, did not practice segregation, and viewed Blacks as equal citizens in their own communities.

MLK wrote that he was disheartened that he would board a train in the North where he could sit side by side with white people. But when the train reached Washington, DC, he had to get off, and board the Jim Crow train, to segregate blacks as they journeyed South.

When MLK made his famous speech about seeing "The Promised Land," some observers might say that he saw it first, not on a mountaintop, but in Simsbury, Connecticut.

[grb]

MLK actually attended my church when he was in Simsbury Ct., Trinity Episcopal.

[wideawake]

Interestingly, as of the 90s, there were still students from historically black colleges working tobacco fields in CT.

I met a few in internship programs for whom this previous summer job was apparently a bonding experience.

[jwparkerjr]

Just an FYI historical note.

Working on those tobacco ‘plantations’ was not a black thing and was not limited to poor folk. When I was in HS in 1955 a lot of kids in my school got a summer job working with tobacco up there. I never did it, but have known several kids who did. Never heard any of the complain about conditions or experiences.

I would not want a young person to read the article and get the idea that working on those ‘plantations’ was an experience limited to poor blacks.

[Liz]

When I was in HS in 1955 a lot of my schoolmates worked there. I would not want others to get the idea that working on a northern 'tobacco plantation’ was an experience limited to poor blacks.

Thank you for enlightening us.

The CBS News report did not mention this....and in fact showed a vintage pic of young Blacks working the fields---and another pic of MLK w/ his fellow laborers---all Black.

NOTE: the CBS report might come up on youtube.

[Liz]

Still operating in the 90's? The CBS reporter stood in front of an old decrepit bldg that was presented as the place where MLK once worked.

==================================================

Youngest person ever to win a Nobel.

As he looked when he gave the "I Have A Dream" speech.

Pictured: Coretta Scott King, Richard Nixon, Patricia Nixon and Martin Luther King in Ghana, 1957.

Martin Luther King voted for the Eisenhower/Nixon Republican presidential ticket. King announced his vote during a public meeting in Ghana, where they were attending a presidential inauguration. The following year, Vice President Nixon helped defeat the Democrat filibuster against the GOP’s 1957 Civil Rights Act.

[raybbr]

MLK Day Events Include A New Documentary On Connecticut's Influence In King's Life

More info here...

I pretty much have lost all regard for the King persona. He's not the man they've made him out to be and his legacy is so badly used/abused that it hearkens back to the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".

If he were a Catholic there would be cries of Sainthood. Thank God, he wasn't.

[Liz]

Mmmmmmmm.....true....but everybody needs a hero.

MLK fit the bill for a lot of people.

And thanks for the link.