Martin Luther King Memorial March

A hard time for the nation, the Civil Rights Movement took a heavy blow after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th, 1968. A well-revered preacher, Dr. King graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary on May 8th, 1951 with the goal to create a unified nation through the implementation of Gandhi’s practice of peaceful protest as well as religion. Through this method, Dr. King led the charge to desegregate public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and protect Black voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Both protests were a success. Mourning the death of Dr. King, students at Kent State’s campus formed a march in his memory on Monday, April 8, 1968. Four days after his assassination.

Black communities across the nation mourned the death of the slain civil rights leader. Heartbroken by the murder and inspired by an increasingly popular wave of the Civil Rights Movement led by Stokely Carmichael and other Black power advocates, riots and protests spread across American cities that evening. Mourning the death of Dr. King, students at Kent State formed a memorial march in honor of the late civil rights leader on April 8, 1968.

The mourning of Dr. King’s death at Kent State began on Friday, April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination, with a memorial service that had 900 people in attendance. On Monday, 100 people gathered in front of Beall-McDowell Hall, two dormitories on Kent State University’s campus. Ashley Higginbotham, a Black graduate counselor at Kent State University, formed the march. Despite the town having racial issues in the past, the march demonstrated that some within the Kent community also believed in Dr. King’s dream of a unified society.

The march started at Beall-McDowell Hall and started with roughly 100 students. It was a silent march through campus as marchers held a banner reading, "We march in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King. The march remained peaceful, with only a brief instigation from the Youth Social Alliance. The group believed that their voices should be heard and joined the march to pass out their fliers. The Alliance advocated violent solutions to end Black American problems now that Dr. King was gone. They also demanded retribution for the assassination. The marchers accepted the papers and then crumpled up, as the majority believed in King’s pacifistic teachings. As the participants marched on, Ashley Higginbotham emphasized that the peaceful action Dr. King championed was the “only solution” to unite a divided nation. 

The students would continue marching in solidarity with Dr. King until they reached the Union Baptist Church. There, speeches and singing of the song “We Shall Overcome” took place. During his speech at the Church, Ashley stated, “This is the time when we must stand up and be counted.” Others who addressed the crowd included Rev. William E. Jacobs, director of United Christian Fellowship, Rev. William G. Spearman, Kent United Presbyterian Church minister, and Rev. Duane A. Frayer, minister of the Wesley Foundation. The speeches honored Dr. King’s emphasis on non-violence and peace and told the marchers to continue that legacy. Rev. Fred D. Thomas was one of those speakers.

“This is the characteristic of the man we memorialize today…[he] was beaten, persecuted, stabbed, put in jail but he didn’t fight back.”

The student body president, Bill Vander Wyden, later commended the marchers for staying peaceful, which differed from the rioting and violence experienced elsewhere in the nation after the assassination. The MLK Memorial March at Kent State resembled the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement, led by leaders that advocated for non-violence and connected to the Church. Inspired by Gandhi’s practice of non-violence, Martin Luther King Jr. implemented this into his leadership and demonstrations in the Civil Rights Movement. Kent State’s march honored this legacy as both Black and white members of the Kent community came together despite the town’s racist past. The memorial would last for two hours altogether, and by the end, the number of participants significantly increased in size, with a peak at around 1000.

The Union Baptist Church was a symbolic way to end the protest as Dr. King, a Baptist minister, organized many of his protests and demonstrations through the Black church community. The peaceful organization to mourn the loss of Black life was reminiscent of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the mid ’60s. Though there were many in attendance who were outraged, they refrained from lashing out and kept the organization peaceful. Additionally, just as it was in Montgomery, the event would ultimately come to organize at a church. Baptist churches offered community organizations that other city institutions did not provide for the Black community, which led to the movement's success. Organizing at the Union Baptist Church with speeches from local reverends like Jacobs, Spearman, and Frayer in the Kent State Memorial March honored the legacy of Dr. King. It was also an ode to the earlier part of the Civil Rights Movement as the country entered into a new phase, emphasizing armed self-defense and self-sufficiency in Black communities.

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