A little-known chapter of Martin Luther King Jr.’s story will come to light on June 18 with the unveiling of a plaque commemorating his decision to join the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in 1952 while attending Boston University. This tribute highlights King’s journey to becoming an Alpha Man and aims to shed light on his time in Boston, as well as honor the lasting legacy of the city’s historic Grove Hall neighborhood.
According to The Boston Globe, Clennon L. King, a Georgia-based documentary filmmaker and the historian responsible for Boston’s Martin and Coretta Love Story Trail, believes that it is up to Black people to keep histories that would be otherwise forgotten alive.
“It’s our jobs as Black folk to chronicle our history,” Clennon King said. “If we don’t mark our history, we’re condemned to repeat it.”
The date of the unveiling also coincides with the 72nd wedding anniversary of Martin and Coretta Scott King, following Clennon King’s efforts in 2024 to get a headstone placed for Mary Louise Powell, the New England Conservatory of Music student who was responsible for introducing Martin and Coretta to each other.
Their interaction on their blind date, initiated by Powell, was recreated by National Geographic’s critically acclaimed “Genius: MLK/X.” Though a fictional, dramatized account, according to Clennon King’s account of their love story for Boston Magazine, it captured the spirit of the accounts of King’s ability to turn on his charm.
Clennon King, who is unrelated to Martin and Coretta, told the outlet that the memorial will bring King’s legacy in Boston back to its roots, back to Boston’s Black neighborhoods that accepted him as their own when he first arrived in the city.
Lauren B. Martin, whose father, Judge Baron H. Martin, took the photo of King and the other Alphas who crossed in 1952, also represents Boston’s history, as the site of the photo is her father’s house which carries the distinction as one of the first owned by Black people in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
King gravitated to the Black community, notably Roxbury and the South End of Boston when he first arrived in Boston in 1951 after leaving Atlanta, and according to Jason Asirifi, the district director and the president of the Organization of New England Chapters of Alpha, (ONECA) the plaque also tells the story of the importance of the Divine Nine in shaping leaders of the civil rights movement.
King, Asirifi noted, wanted the “betterment of humanity and the Black experience” that Alphas and other Divine Nine members also sought. He continued, “Everything [King] did was to leave a legacy for his children and the people around him. You don’t seek an organization like Alpha if you don’t want to be a part of a larger community.”
That larger community Asirifi spoke of was in many ways encapsulated by King’s line brothers, like Herman Hemingway, the founding director of Boston’s Office of Human Rights who died in 2020, and was honored with his own memorial as part of the 1965 Freedom Plaza.
According to Hemingway’s daughter, Myra, “He really loved his fraternity and the support they gave him through the brotherhood over the years meant so much to him. It’s hard that he’s not here, but in spirit, I know he’s looking down and smiling.”
Martin, meanwhile, believes that despite the changing demographics of the neighborhood of Grove Hall, the plaque could still remind people of King’s belief in the “Beloved Community” and of the people who once called the neighborhood their home.
“Things are going to change, people are going to change neighborhoods,” Martin told the Globe. “But hopefully these markers gives the new neighborhood a reference and an understanding of how we’re all related.”
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