Donald Smart said he remembers what his parents thought after they saw the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver a speech at Bridgeport’s Klein Memorial Auditorium in 1961.
“They were very impressed with the strength and the clarity of his message of nonviolence, and Christian love and brotherhood,” Smart said.
Smart was 7 years old when his parents heard King speak. He still remembers how his parents were taken by King’s charisma and speaking style. Smart’s parents weren’t alone.
King spoke to a nearly all white crowd of 2,700 during his first visit to Bridgeport. He later visited the city several more times.
King visited cities like Bridgeport to build support and fundraise for the Civil Rights Movement in the south while avoiding the Northeast’s own struggles with racism, according to historian Yohuru Williams at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
While King’s visits are held in high regard by Smart, and officials at the Klein Memorial Auditorium, Smart acknowledged many people in the area simply don’t know about King’s visits.
“There isn't much knowledge of the number of times he visited Connecticut,” Smart said.
King first visited the “Park City” in March of 1961 to speak at the University of Bridgeport’s Frank Jacoby Lectures. The series of talks began in 1952 to promote racial equality.
King spoke to an audience of 2,700 according to the now defunct Bridgeport Post, although the university newspaper, the Scribe asserted 2,000 people attended. The speech, according to the local press, was the most popular in the lecture series.
King spoke for 45 minutes and criticized the Democratic and Republican parties for their failure to advocate for civil rights. He used the speech to garner support for the Civil Rights Movement.
The podium from which King spoke is now kept by the Klein Memorial Auditorium. It’s used for special Black History Month performances, including one featuring an actor portraying Frederick Douglass.
The podium was restored and repaired after Klein Memorial Auditorium’s Executive Director Laurence Caso discovered in 2015 it was used by King.
“We just put the last coat of finish on it,” Caso said. “We have some workers here who have partially restored it, they fixed what was a damaged leg. And they've given it new coats of finishing.”
King made no mention in his speeches of the ongoing battles against de-facto desegregation at the time within Bridgeport schools and housing communities.
Smart said King knew what was going on in the city.
“I understand that Dr. King was well aware of continuing issues in Fairfield County or the Bridgeport community, as far as civil rights are concerned, and probably, as far as issues in housing and different opportunities for good housing, based on race,” Smart said.
King’s visits were more about getting sympathetic audiences, many who were white liberals, to support his cause in the south; but would later antagonize northern liberals after he began to focus on Northern racism and inequality, according to Yohuru Williams, distinguished university chair and professor of history and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative.
“The interesting thing about King in particular is, those messages are rarely targeted toward the cities that he's visiting,” Williams said. “So the reason that it resonates in Bridgeport, and other communities, is King is there to talk about what's happening in the South. It doesn't shine a mirror on the challenges of what we would identify today as de-facto segregation.”
Bridgeport’s numerous issues with de-facto segregation at the time was common across much of the Northeast.
King, by that point, was a respected figure. The University of Bridgeport awarded King an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree later that year.
He was viewed with considerable suspicion and hostility by many Americans, who either espoused white supremacy, or considered him a communist.
Smart, a longtime civil rights activist in the area, said King was trying to speak at the city earlier than 1961, but faced pushback by local civil rights leaders, worried about potential physical threats and violence.
King would visit Bridgeport with a police escort, but Williams said this was routine.
King almost died in 1958 after being stabbed in an assassination attempt at a book signing by a mentally-ill woman in Harlem, New York. It would have been a public relations disaster for Bridgeport had King been physically attacked. He also frequently faced death threats.
“No city wanted to make national headlines for being the place where Dr. King would have been violently assaulted,” Williams said.
In a 2006 article published by the University of Bridgeport’s alumni magazine "Knightlines," King was reported to have said he faced no issues in the city and felt welcomed.
King visited the city again in 1962, this time speaking at Central High School. He would visit The Klein Memorial Auditorium again in 1964 and in 1966.
King was later assassinated in 1968. A memorial service was later held at Klein Memorial Auditorium.
The now defunct Bridgeport Telegram newspaper reported a citywide level of mourning; the high schools were closed early so students could attend and employers were asked to allow their employees to leave early to go to the memorial service.
The Bridgeport Post reported then Republican Mayor Hugh Curran would later praise the local African American community for not pursuing revenge, as other cities across the country experienced riots in the aftermath of King’s assassination.
The city has since honored King’s memory with cultural events on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Williams said people must remember why King was fighting civil rights. And that many of the same battles continue to be fought for by a new generation of racial justice advocates in Bridgeport and elsewhere.
“The more important question for the city of Bridgeport, or any community is, how are they living out the message beyond the sound bites,” Williams said.
