On Monday, as for the last 16 years, an audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s only speech made at Dartmouth College played in room 105, Dartmouth Hall in Hanover. In this same room, King lectured students and Upper Valley residents in 1962.
Evelyn Ellis is Vice President of Institutional Diversity and Equity at Dartmouth. She recalls standing before a crowd here, as the school celebrated the speech’s 50th anniversary.
“I was stunned at how choked up I got, because all I was doing was introducing the speaker. But then it dawned on me. No. I am in the space he would have been fifty years ago. It was pretty daunting.”
Ellis says she and her colleagues spend the better part of a year planning Dartmouth’s 2 weeks of Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations.
The events are open to the public, and run through the first of February.