Category: Community
MLK Jr Delivers “I Have a Dream”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boston University alumnus, delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, the then-largest civil rights demonstration in US history.
Braves Field Becomes Nickerson Field
The University purchases Braves Field, which will become the site of Nickerson Field, the Case Athletic Center, and the West Campus residences.
WBUR-FM
WBUR-FM goes on the air at 4:00 p.m. on March 1, 1950, as a 400-watt non-commercial educational FM station licensed to Boston University. By 1971, WBUR had enough full-time employees to qualify for status as a public radio station and applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for certification. In 1984, the station won three Associated Press (AP) Awards for news coverage. In May 1987, WBUR won the 1986 George Foster Peabody Award—the most prestigious national award for broadcasters—for Liberation Remembered, a four- part series on the Holocaust. Since then, WBUR has won the Peabody two more times, including an award for Car Talk in 1993.
ROTC Arrives on Campus
The US War Department invites the University to become a contracting agency under the Army Enlisted Reserve Corps Pre-Induction Training Program, also known as ROTC.
Aeronautical Engineering Established at Logan Airport
Captain Hilding Carlson and Lt. Arthur B. Metcalf are hired to start the Aeronautical Engineering Department, located at Logan Airport.
BU Alum Named “Man of the Year”
Owen D. Young (Class of 1896), alumnus, international diplomat, and Boston University School of Law instructor, is named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine for the second time. Young is one of the chief architects of the Dawes Plan, which established the policy for German reparations following World War I. Young was also part of the 1929 committee that created the Young Plan for the fiscal rehabilitation of Germany, at the time considered to be a great diplomatic feat.
Magazine cover courtesy of Time magazine.
"The great lawyer of the future will be the man who has the faculty for seeing right; the man who has the courage to tell what he saw; the man who has the stability to maintain what he said." — Owen D. Young
General Alumni Association Established
The General Alumni Association is established and fifty-one years later successfully revives the Scarlet Key, an award that recognizes seniors who have displayed exceptional leadership and dedication to the University.
First ROTC Pass-in-Review
Pass-in-Review is a long-standing military tradition in this country. The dean of the College of Business Administration, Everett Lord, makes ROTC compulsory in 1918; the ROTC remains active at the University until 1970. The Army and Air Force ROTC units are reestablished at the University in September 1981 under former Dean of Students Staton R. Curtis, academic coordinator for Military Education. A separate Navy unit is established in 1982 and a Marine unit in 1986.
Goodwill Industries Founded by STH Graduate
Boston University graduate Edgar Helms founds Goodwill Industries while teaching applied Christianity at the School of Theology. A branch of the store opens on campus in May 2008.
LAW Student Competes in First Olympiad
Thomas Edmund Burke (Class of 1897) takes a six-week leave of absence from Boston University School of Law to compete in Athens at the first Olympic competition held since 393 A.D.
