by Daniel Johnson
June 14, 2025
Martin Luther King Jr. joined the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in 1952 whereas attending Boston College.
A bit-known chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s story will come to mild on June 18 with the disclosing of a plaque commemorating his resolution to hitch the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in 1952 whereas attending Boston College. This tribute highlights King’s journey to turning into an Alpha Man and goals to make clear his time in Boston, in addition to honor the lasting legacy of town’s historic Grove Corridor neighborhood.
In response to The Boston Globe, Clennon L. King, a Georgia-based documentary filmmaker and the historian liable for Boston’s Martin and Coretta Love Story Path, believes that it’s as much as Black individuals to maintain histories that will be in any other case forgotten alive.
“It’s our jobs as Black people to chronicle our historical past,” Clennon King stated. “If we don’t mark our historical past, we’re condemned to repeat it.”
The date of the disclosing additionally coincides with the 72nd marriage ceremony anniversary of Martin and Coretta Scott King, following Clennon King’s efforts in 2024 to get a gravestone positioned for Mary Louise Powell, the New England Conservatory of Music pupil who was liable for introducing Martin and Coretta to one another.
Their interplay on their blind date, initiated by Powell, was recreated by Nationwide Geographic’s critically acclaimed “Genius: MLK/X.” Although a fictional, dramatized account, in response to Clennon King’s account of their love story for Boston Journal, it captured the spirit of the accounts of King’s capacity to activate his appeal.
Clennon King, who’s unrelated to Martin and Coretta, informed the outlet that the memorial will deliver King’s legacy in Boston again to its roots, again to Boston’s Black neighborhoods that accepted him as their very own when he first arrived within the metropolis.
Lauren B. Martin, whose father, Decide Baron H. Martin, took the picture of King and the opposite Alphas who crossed in 1952, additionally represents Boston’s historical past, as the location of the picture is her father’s home which carries the excellence as one of many first owned by Black individuals within the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
King gravitated to the Black neighborhood, notably Roxbury and the South Finish of Boston when he first arrived in Boston in 1951 after leaving Atlanta, and in response to Jason Asirifi, the district director and the president of the Group of New England Chapters of Alpha, (ONECA) the plaque additionally tells the story of the significance of the Divine 9 in shaping leaders of the civil rights motion.
King, Asirifi famous, needed the “betterment of humanity and the Black expertise” that Alphas and different Divine 9 members additionally sought. He continued, “All the pieces [King] did was to depart a legacy for his youngsters and the individuals round him. You don’t search a company like Alpha for those who don’t need to be part of a bigger neighborhood.”
That bigger neighborhood Asirifi spoke of was in some ways encapsulated by King’s line brothers, like Herman Hemingway, the founding director of Boston’s Workplace of Human Rights who died in 2020, and was honored along with his personal memorial as a part of the 1965 Freedom Plaza.
In response to Hemingway’s daughter, Myra, “He actually liked his fraternity and the help they gave him via the brotherhood through the years meant a lot to him. It’s onerous that he’s not right here, however in spirit, I do know he’s wanting down and smiling.”
Martin, in the meantime, believes that regardless of the altering demographics of the neighborhood of Grove Corridor, the plaque might nonetheless remind individuals of King’s perception within the “Beloved Neighborhood” and of the individuals who as soon as known as the neighborhood their house.
“Issues are going to vary, persons are going to vary neighborhoods,” Martin informed the Globe. “However hopefully these markers provides the brand new neighborhood a reference and an understanding of how we’re all associated.”
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