DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker records — this one's from Dallas County, about a night at SMU that nobody in that auditorium forgot. By March of 1965, something was already stirring on the Southern Methodist University campus. Students were waking up, paying attention, getting restless in the best possible way.
And at least fifty of them didn't just talk about it — they traveled from Dallas all the way to Alabama to march from Selma to Montgomery. Fifty students. That's not a club meeting.
That's a conviction. A few months after that march, the SMU Student Senate extended an invitation to a man who needed no introduction and yet somehow kept earning one — the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. He accepted.
Now, picture this. March 17th, 1966. McFarlin Auditorium.
Two thousand seven hundred people packed into that hall. Two thousand seven hundred. Dr.
King stood before them and he didn't come in swinging with the fire and thunder right away. No. He was methodical.
He cited history. He laid out the longstanding challenges. He gave practical reasons, one after another, for why segregation should end.
He built the case the way a craftsman builds a house — foundation first. And then, when the groundwork was laid, he let the truth speak plainly. "In the final analysis," he said, "racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong." That was it. That was the nail.
The room answered him with a standing ovation. It was his first visit to a predominantly White university in Texas. And it didn't end when he walked off that stage.
His words kept moving — into the movements for equality on that campus, in the city of Dallas, and out into the nation. Sometimes a speech is just a speech. And sometimes two thousand seven hundred people walk out of an auditorium changed.
This was the second kind.
What the marker says
SMU students were becoming more active in civil rights when at least 50 traveled from Dallas to march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965. A few months later, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. accepted an invitation to the campus from the SMU Student Senate. On March 17, 1966, he spoke to a crowd of 2,700 at McFarlin Auditorium. Citing history and longstanding challenges, he listed practical reasons why segregation should end before stating, "in the final analysis, racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong." Dr. King received a standing ovation in his first Texas visit to a predominantly White university. His speech influenced many to engage in movements for equality on campus, in their city and in the nation. (2021)