The student body was mostly Southern, white and well-to-do, said retired English professor Kenneth Shields, 82, who began at SMU in 1961.įew black students were enrolled at SMU, and most of them lived off campus. In the mid-’60s, the civil rights struggle was sweeping the country but was slow to arrive at SMU’s campus. “We started walking up the steps and the crowd just parted - and started clapping.” “We got out of the car and it was just total silence,” he said, and paused. Would they yell and jeer? Would they boo? A large crowd of white students and faculty gathered on the steps. The auditorium was still locked for security. That afternoon, they drove up to SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium for King’s speech. “He sat in the back seat and I was in the front seat, like a real chauffeur.” “It was the chance of a lifetime,” he said. King answered his questions and asked Moore what he planned to do after college. He told King he’d been to Montgomery, Ala., with two busloads of SMU students and faculty for King’s third Selma-to-Montgomery march. Moore, then a college senior, remembers asking King about the Watts riots in Los Angeles and the Chicago Freedom Movement, a new campaign to encourage civil rights activities in northern cities. Police cars drove in front and behind as they left the airport. When Moore arrived to pick up King at the Dallas Love Field terminal, he saw snipers on rooftops.
King’s campus visit came just a few years after President John F. “Whenever I get a chance,” he said, “I tell the story about being Martin Luther King’s chauffeur.” In it, King stands at the podium, flanked by three students and his assistant.įor Moore, 69, now a dean of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, the day remains a highlight of his life. University archives include one photo from the event, which was sponsored by the student government. His speech, delivered on March 17, 1966, is a seldom noted chapter of SMU history. King, already a Nobel Peace Prize winner, accepted the invitation. SMU’s first black athlete was attacked and spit on.ĭr. A neighborhood laundry distributed racist pamphlets. Martin Luther King Jr., to speak on campus.Īt the time, the local lunch counter still banned black customers. The only black people he knew were housemaids.Īs a student at Southern Methodist University, he invited the nation’s most prominent civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.īert Moore grew up in the all-white Park Cities of the 1950s.
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