Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Room
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Room offers all visitors access to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s papers on view in a permanent exhibition. The exhibition provides an intimate view of Dr. King’s time at the University, and his leadership of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement for racial equality in the United States through photographs, handwritten letters and other materials in his papers. King earned his PhD in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955, donating his papers to the University in 1964, saying:
“…many people, as the years unfold, will want to know more about non-violence and they will want to know about the ethical and historical roots of non-violence and there are many things in the collection, from letters to manuscripts, that may be helpful in getting people to see the roots of non-violence in my own thinking and in the movement that I have been a part of in the South.” 1
The King Room exhibition explores several facets of Dr. King’s professional and personal work, stretching from his academic doctoral work at Boston University to his role in the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King’s civil rights work is a particular highlight of the exhibition, featuring material from his work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, NAACP, the Highlander Folk School, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Materials related to Dr. King’s work leading up to and during the Montgomery Bus Boycott is a strength of the collection, and the exhibition includes facsimiles of telegrams, programs, leaflets, manuscript fragments, and selections from “Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story” a comic book published by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The exhibition also spotlights Dr. King’s original speeches, book and sermons drafts, and his personal correspondence with such figures as Harry Belafonte, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Visitors can find the reading room on the 3rd floor of Mugar Memorial Library during the library’s open hours.
1 Source of Quote: September 11, 1964 Press Conference with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Boston University, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.