as a reference librarian, i get a lot of questionsabout historical events in louisville and so one that i kept getting over the yearswas about this visit to uofl, to the law school, by dr. martin luther king, jr. i ran acrossan old 1967 thoroughbred yearbook and that had pictures of dr. king speaking in thisvery room, in the allen courtroom. but i still didn't know who took the photos; i didn'tknow what the circumstances were; why was
hip hop dance classes in tuscaloosa al, he here? so, finally i had it narrowed downto the spring of 1967 and that was when i met steve porter who was actually the personwho invited dr. king to speak at the law school and that opened up a lot of sources of information.i knew that dr. king was going to be in town, first of all he had a brother who lived here,and we were in the middle of open housing
demonstrations in 1967 and then there wasgoing to be a major conference for the southern christian leadership conference here in louisville.so, i called up his brother, whom i knew, and said, "a.d., you think dr. king couldfind time to come out and speak to the law school?" he said, "i'll see if i can arrangeit." and he did because he loved to speak to colleges. he gave a lot of speeches incolleges. as a matter of fact, the "i have a dream" speech, he gave that dozens of timesbefore he gave it in washington and he gave it mostly to college groups; basically thesame speech. i was always up on things- civil rights, social issues- and there was a lotgoing on on campus because the black student union was formed as a part of that, so wewere socially active so there was no way that
i was ever going to miss the dr. martin lutherking speech. unfortunately, when i got over here all the seats were taken. there werehoards of people outside and if you, i was able to eventually get to peer through thatsecond window from the left and participate that way. this was a law school event. well,the whole university found out about it. and this was not a very big room, so there werepeople outside, as he drove up and came in people milling around outside who never didget in to the room. people, like andy, who were hanging from the windows. literally,we were inside and we could see people hanging from windows on both sides, just, you know,grabbing on. it was a warm day. this room
was not air-conditioned and so they had raisedall the windows for air circulation and also
so they could hear. and it was excitement,no question about it. i mean, this was a national figure who had come to this town and peoplewere curious. people wanted to hear about it. i think he probably changed some mindsthat day.
