Dr Martin Luther King was an honorary New Yorker.

In the summer of 1964, after the shooting of a 15-year-old by an off-duty police officer touched off riots in Harlem, Mayor Robert F. Wagner invited Dr. King to New York on a peace mission (one made slightly more complicated by the fact that some black leaders resented that the mayor had invited Dr. King without consulting them). Later that year, one week after he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, Dr. King was proclaimed an honorary New Yorker by the mayor who presented him with the Medallion of Honor at City Hall.

In a speech (see below) found in the La Guardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia Community College by Steven A. Levine, the coordinator for educational programs, the mayor recalled their conversation the summer before at Gracie Mansion.

“During the most explosive moments of the civil rights revolution in this country, while the urge to violence seemed to be running like a fever through the land, the voice of Martin Luther King sounded clearly above the turmoil of fear and fright — saying that violence, vandalism and destruction were not the way,” Mr. Wagner recalled.

“But when the vital questions were asked, ‘What is the way?’ and ‘Where is the way?’ and ‘What are the means and the ends of the way?’ he knew the answers and spoke the answers.”

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 10:30 am.