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A Broad Agenda and a Star-Studded Cast
While much has been made – and rightfully so – of Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to 91AV’s precursor institution, St. Francis College, one must bear in mind that he was not the only prominent figure to participate in the college’s human rights symposium of 1964. From a relative “local” activist like Rabbi Harry Sky of Temple Beth El in Portland to Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the symposium committee managed to assemble an impressive and diverse set of speakers and panelists from the local area and the region as well as on a national scale.
“I Have a Dream … The Negro and the American Quest for Identity,” was composed of both afternoon and evening sessions on both May 6 and 7, which each of the four sections dedicated to a different subject under the umbrella topic of human rights. Attendees were encouraged to register in advance due to limited space, and a modest fee of $1 per session was charged.
On May 6, Wilkins, served as the headliner on the issue of “Social Justice” and was followed by a panel discussion by Charles Mathias, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (representing the sixth district of Maryland) and the liberal wing of the Republican Party who later went on to become a U.S. senator; Roger Shinn, professor of Applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City; and Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the March on Washington.
That evening, the topic of “Freedom in the North” was addressed by Louis Scolnick, chairman of the Maine Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Paul Chapman, director of Packard Manse, a Stoughton, Massachusetts-based organization dedicated to fostering relationships between Protestants and Catholics and accomplished in uniting the two Christian factions to work together in the freedom movement. The panel discussion that followed included Sky and Waldemar Roebuck, the New York regional director of Action for Interracial Understanding.
On May 7, Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic worker movement and managing editor/publisher of its publication, kicked off the afternoon session, which focused on “Civil Disobedience.” She spoke of the work of The Catholic Worker in in the struggle for civil rights, telling tales of being thrown in jail and shot at. Her talk was followed by King’s address. The panel afterwards featured John Doar, chief trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department, and Jesse Morris, field secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Jackson, Mississippi.
The final segment of the symposium that evening, titled “Freedom and Identity,” highlighted Leslie Fiedler, author and professor at Montana State University, who shared his controversial conviction that the only solution to discrimination is the blending of the races, and Allan Knight Chalmers, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who quoted American prose and poetry on the topic of individual freedom and identity, argued that the civil rights movement is a religious campaign, and posited that segregation was economically unsound. The concluding panel discussion was open to any and all symposium participants who wished to take part.