01/19/2026
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Middletown and Wesleyan University four times, in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1966.
This photo shows Dr. King speaking at Wesleyan's commencement ceremonies in 1964.
Dr. John D. Maguire (1932-2018), a Wesleyan University professor who joined Dr. King on a Freedom Ride to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1961, recorded his recollections of Dr. King's first visit to Wesleyan. Written in 2006, they are part of the Middlesex County Historical Society's archives:
" On January 14, 1962, Dr. King arrived on campus in mid-afternoon to preach to a packed-to-overflowing chapel that night. We had known each other since I was a 19-year-old college student and he 21 when we met and spent a weekend together at the seminary he was attending. We had renewed our friendship when Wesleyan faculty colleague David Swift and I were part of the 1961 Freedom Rides, and were jailed briefly in Montgomery, AL, my boyhood home. During this first visit to Middletown in 1962, Dr. King stayed overnight at the University guest house on High Street in order to be available most of the next day to the College of Social Studies students and faculty, addressed them at lunch that Monday. I recall, ruefully, introducing him- since it was his 33rd birthday- by saying, "I hope you make it through this year, Doc; the last founder of what became a worldwide movement is reported to have been crucified by the spring of his 33rd year!" How could we have known that the year was wrong but the death season cruelly correct: That Martin would be slain on April 4, 1968, just six years later?..."
