NEWS
Alumni recall King’s visit to UW
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by Andriy Pazuniak
Thursday, January 19, 2006
When remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., many people recall his powerful speeches, or an image of him leading a throng of people in a civil rights protest.
For UW alumnus Paul Mennes, who invited King to speak on the University of Wisconsin campus in 1965, King was simply someone who needed a ride from an airport on a cold November day.
Mennes did not even get to hear King's speech.
"I had to work behind the scenes," said Mennes, who organized King's visit to the UW campus and was in charge of picking up King at the airport. "I assume he talked about non-violence and the anti-war movement."
As UW and the City of Madison celebrated King's life as a civil rights activist this past weekend, many within the university community remembered King's visit to the UW campus Nov. 23, 1965.
Presenting his speech titled "The Future of Integration," King spoke to a packed audience of 3,000 UW students at the Stock Pavilion about the importance of non-violence and protecting the rights of the underprivileged.
"He was a hero to students here," Mennes recalled. "The line to hear him speak was going outside."
Melba Jesudason, another UW alumnus, was among the crowd of people who heard King speak that day.
Jesudason recalled the parallels between King and another famous civil rights activist.
"The principles [King] spoke for were very similar to those of Mahatma Ghandi," Jesudason said in a phone interview. "Like Ghandi, [King] fought strongly for the rights of the underprivileged."
According to both Jesudason and Mennes, the UW student body supported King's message and published newspaper reports received it well. After his speech, the capacity crowd in attendance honored King with a standing ovation.
"King was very appreciative of the support from the students," Mennes said. "The university had a lasting history for supporting liberal causes and the students were very supportive of [King] and his movement."
Mennes, who chaired the Union Forum Committee that negotiated for more than a year to bring King to UW, added UW students alone — independent from the university administration — organized King's visit.
During the visit, Mennes served as a tour guide to the UW campus for King, who also addressed some sociology classes during his visit.
The opportunity allowed Mennes to get to know King on a personal level, not just as the political figure he saw on the news every night.
"[King] was one of those people who, if he met ten people in two minutes, he would remember everybody's name and everything about them," Mennes said. "He had the capacity to interact with everybody he saw."
Instead of understanding King as solely the man leading the crowds of people in protest, King's visit to UW in 1965 allowed Mennes and many others on campus the opportunity to understand King on an entirely new level. As Mennes so put, King and his message could just be waiting at the airport.
