CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Monday is a federal holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The American minister and civil rights leader passed away in 1968, but his life and legacy still live on.
While his work made waves globally, his work here in the Queen City is lesser known but not to be overlooked.
Let’s start from the beginning. There is no clear record of when King may have first set foot in Charlotte.
However, images on record do reveal that King was seen at Douglas Municipal Airport in 1954.
In that image, King was seen meeting with the president of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Kelly Alexander Senior.
Alexander was then a prominent figure in Charlotte. His father owned and operated the only black funeral home in the city.
Let’s jump ahead to 1960. It was on September 25th of that year when King delivered a speech to nearly 2,700 people at Charlotte Park Center.
That park was renamed in 1987 to what is now known as the Grady Cole Center on the campus of Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte.
The speech King gave there was an early iteration of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Two years later, in 1962, there would be another Charlotte connection for Doctor King—although it wouldn’t happen in the Queen City.
As rumor has it, that’s when Charlotte preacher Billy Graham, a friend of King, discreetly bailed him out of jail in Albany, Georgia.
King got out of jail in Albany only to find himself back in jail in Birmingham—where his famed letter from a Birmingham jail was written.
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FILE – The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right, accompanied by Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, center, is booked by city police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 23, 1956. The quest by a civil rights pioneer to have her arrest record wiped clean after nearly 70 years after she protested racial segregation has raised the possibility of similar bids to clear the names of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., whose convictions remain on the books in Alabama’s capital. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick, File) -
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., center, appears at noon recess on the first day of trials in the Montgomery, Ala. racial bus boycott, March 19, 1956. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick) -
FILE _The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta Scott King after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala., in a file photo from March 22, 1956. The two were married at a now-vacant house near Marion, Ala., three years earlier. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick, File) -
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This is how the morning newspapers in London headlined the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, April 5, 1968. (AP Photo)
Then a month later, he’d be back in the Queen City to speak at a convocation for Charlotte’s black high schools.
Not too long after that, he’d give a speech in Rocky Mount, North Carolina—in November of 1962.
If it sounds familiar, it should.
The very next year, Doctor King would give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC, in 1963.
Roughly three years later, he’d be back in Charlotte.
That’s when he’d speak at Johnson C. Smith University.
He addressed nearly 5,000 people on September 21st—amidst questions about the effectiveness of nonviolence in the civil rights movement.
That would end up being his final visit to Charlotte.
But his story and connection to the Queen City don’t end there.
The day he was assassinated, he was supposed to be in Charlotte.
King was scheduled to tour the Queen City in April 1968, but the visit was postponed due to escalating tensions in Memphis, Tennessee.
A telegram from Dorothy Cotton informed Charlotte organizers of the cancellation just days before King’s assassination on April 4, 1968.
This telegram is a significant artifact of Charlotte’s connection to King, preserved in UNC Charlotte’s archives.
Doctor King’s multiple visits and connections to Charlotte highlight the city’s importance in the civil rights movement and solidify its place in King’s legacy, from early civil rights activism to his postponed final visit.
