Red, white and blue flags hung from the ceiling of the Fort Homer W. Hesterly auditorium in Tampa Sunday night. More than 2,000 people sitting on folding chairs and bleachers listened to the high school choir sing hymns while they waited patiently for the arrival of the speaker. Suddenly a Tampa policeman stepped to the microphone and said, “Please go outside the building. We have received word that a bomb has been planted here. Please take your time going out and remain outside until we have checked.”

Four student members of the Americans for Democratic Action were among the group which filed back out into the night to wait. For the students the experience was a unique one. For the throng of well-dressed Negroes it was just one incident among many.

Few, if any, were scared away from the area by the bomb threat. For twenty minutes they stood outside chatting and talking with friends. No angry murmur against the segment which thus persecuted them.

While waiting for word that the auditorium was safe, the UF students were able to speak to Dr. Martin Luther King, the speaker.

REV. KING listened to the students, made suggestions, and expressed an interest in receiving more information about the ADA group and its plans to desegregate UF’s lower division. If the group was what it appeared to be, he said that he would lend his name to the drive here in Florida. [Obviously the visit was prior to UF’s integration in 1958]

Then the word went round: no bomb. And the people thronged back to their seats under the flag-draped ceiling to hear the choir sing “This Is My Country.” Then everyone stood and sang the “Star Spangled Banner.”

The invocation was quiet and reserved. In part, the minister said, “And thank you for America. We can’t say land of the free, because some of us yet have fear.” And he prayed for those who gave the bomb scare, and as he prayed the sirens were wailing in the background as the cars returned to pick up the police and firemen.

A HUSH FELL over the audience as Martin Luther King stepped forward to speak to his people. He outlined the Negro’s new sense of dignity and destiny.

“One of the challenges the Negro must meet is his responsibility to “develop a world perspective,” he said. “We have made of this world a neighborhood, and we must make of it a brotherhood. We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish as fools.” He suggested that the black man could teach nonviolence to the rest of the world.

“A second challenge to the Negro today is to be able to compete with all people on a universal level,” he said. “We are challenged also to continue to engage in the creative protest to break down all barriers of segregation and discrimination that still exist.”

King listed two myths that must be gotten rid of. One was what he termed the “Myth of time.”

“People say that ‘time will solve this problem–pray and stop pushing!’ We must be patient and pray, true, but we must say to those people that time is neutral, and can be used constructively or destructively.

“EDUCATIONAL determinism is another myth. People say that only education will solve this problem. I say that morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated.

“It cannot make men love me but it can keep him from lynching me, and this is important to me.” King called for a second Emancipation Proclamation from President Kennedy. “The time has come for the President to issue an executive order calling for an end to all segregation because it stands against the 14th amendment to the constitution of the United States,” he said.

He further called for more Negroes to vote; “One of the most significant steps a Negro can take now is that short walk to the voting booth. Within ten years we can elect more than ten Negro congressmen from the South to vote in policies for our nation.”

Striking out against communism, King said where democracy differs is that it wants to secure moral ends by moral means.

“We must be able to stand up before the oppressor and say we will match your capacity for inflicting pain by our capacity to endure suffering,” he said.

He received a standing ovation, and as the crowd filed out one of the students, noticing paper pasted over part of the men’s room sign, lifted the sheet and looked under it. It said “White only.”

(The above was found in the 1960 column of “Artifacts,” my files of the UF Alligator).

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Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis at the age of 39, April 4, 1968.

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INTERESTING

“Obeying Orders Lowers Moral Responsibility Perception in the Brain“