Photo by Renee Landuyt
Grosse Pointe Board of Realtors President Alexis DeLuca and Grosse Pointe News Publisher John Minnis stand by the marker their organizations helped bring to fruition.
Martin Luther King Jr. in Grosse Pointe
Registered Site S0754
Side One
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Grosse Pointe High School auditorium on March 14, 1968, to a crowd of more than two thousand people. In a speech entitled “The Other America,” King depicted two worlds within the nation: one where white families flourished, and another where black families struggled due to inequality. Nearly two hundred protestors from Breakthrough, an anti-communist group based in Detroit, picketed outside the high school and heckled King during his speech. The protestors criticized King for his opposition to the Vietnam War. King allowed a few hecklers to voice their opinions during his presentation. At the end of the speech he received a standing ovation. Just three weeks after he visited Grosse Pointe, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Side Two
Speaking here in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. described “two Americas”: “One America is beautiful for situation…. In this America children grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.… Thousands of young people are deprived of an opportunity to get an adequate education … the schools are so segregated … that the best in these minds can never come out…. “However difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome … because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”
King’s speech, dubbed “The Other America,” began innocently enough on this day. He explained that black children weren’t reaching their potential because of the deplorable learning environment.
“The schools are so inadequate, so overcrowded, so devoid of quality, so segregated if you will, that the best in these minds can never come out,” King said.
A woman shouted at King from the audience, joining other hecklers who called him a “traitor” and demanded he leave.
Those close to King noticed that his normally steady hands were shaking. His forehead glistened in sweat.
But he continued, and the hecklers were drowned out by deafening applause.
King’s speech was aimed at a white suburban audience. He urged supporters to stand up and oppose inequality.
“It may well be that we may have to repent in this generation for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time,” King said.
King could have been speaking today. The preacher said it was unacceptable that nearly 9% of the black community was unemployed. In Detroit, the current unemployment rate is 17%. Schools are virtual dropout factories. And more than half of the city’s children live in poverty.
“Until (racism) is removed, there will be people walking the streets, living in their humble dwellings feeling that they are nobody, feeling that they have no dignity and feeling that they are not respected,” King said. “The first thing that must be on the agenda of our nation is to get rid of racism.”
Hecklers continued to berate King. When he expressed opposition to the Vietnam War, which he called “unjust, ill-considered, evil, costly, unwinable,” some in the audience became incensed. Security removed three or four people.
An undercover FBI agent in the audience reported that King’s speech was peaceful.
Less than a year after the deadly 1967 riots in Detroit, King advocated nonviolence.
“I’m absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt,” King said. “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
The audience erupted in applause; others booed.
A bewildered King spoke at a press conference after the speech, saying he had never faced such hostility at an indoor event.
It was one of King’s most memorable – and often overlooked – speeches. Read the entire speech here.
Three weeks later, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Sources:
Steve Neavling, “Martin Luther King Jr. defied hecklers in Grosse Pointe speech in 1968“, Motor City Muckracker, January 15, 2017.
John McVeigh, “New marker commemorates King’s historic speech at South“, Grosse Pointe News, January 14, 2021.