Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.. March 6, 1964. , Orlando's Rev. Curtis Jackson invited Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Orlando in 1962. Rev. King was unable to attend at the time, but he did come to Orlando in the Spring of 1964 after leading the 10,000-person March for Freedom in Philadelphia on March 5th with Jackie Robinson. , , The following day, Rev. King arrived in Orlando to lead an all-day conference at Shiloh Baptist Church in Parramore. He met with The NAACP Youth Council, pastors and other local leaders. That evening, on an unseasonably cold and windy night, a crowd of 2,000 gathered at Tinker Field to hear Rev. King. Many sat in the grandstands while others gathered on the field around King as he spoke from the pitchers mound. A local newspaper, noted that only 10-15 people of the large audience were white. Rev. King’s prophetic words on the future of integration assured that “segregation is on its deathbed and the only question now is how expensive it’s funeral will be because of the segregationist.” Earlier in the day, an inclement weather forecast nearly drove the gathering to the Fairgrounds at Exposition Park. However, Rev. King’s gathering at Tinker Field, the birthplace of integration in Orlando, established a poetic continuation of Orlando’s journey toward equality at this site. The very infield where Dandridge, Irving, Coleman, Paula and Robinson made Orlando’s first steps toward an integrated society now became hallowed ground in The City’s history of Civil Rights. , , In March 1968, just days before his assassination, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told Brooklyn Dodgers Star Don Newcombe, "Don, you’ll never know how easy you and Jackie [Robinson] and [Larry] Doby and Campy [Roy Campanella] made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field."