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To L. Harold DeWolf

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Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: October 23, 1956

Location: Montgomery, Ala.?

Genre: Letter

Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Travels

Details

King agrees to meet with his former dissertation advisor and interested Boston University students for lunch on 30 October. King delivered "A Realistic Look at Race Relations” to the Ford Hall Forum (which met in Boston University's Jordan Hall) on 28 October, but he canceled his subsequent engagements after receiving word of a possible court injunction against the bus boycott.1

Dr. L. Harold DeWolf
Boston University School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston 15, Massachusetts

Dear Dr. DeWolf:

Thanks for your very kind letter of October 9. I would have answered this letter long before now but absence from the city for several days has delayed my reply.

I will be more than happy to meet with a group of students for a discussion session during my stay in Boston. It appears to me that the only possible time that I could engage in such a session would be Tuesday noon at the lunch hour. All other possibilities that you suggested conflict with engagements that I have already made. On Monday evening I have a commitment in Providence, Rhode Island, and all day Monday and Tuesday morning I will be in the process of having a general medical examination at Lahey Clinic. I will have to leave Boston about six o’clock Tuesday afternoon for New York City. In the light of these prior commitments, the Tuesday noon hour seems to be the only possibility. If this can be arranged you may feel free to go ahead with the plans.

I will be arriving in Boston Sunday afternoon around one or two o’clock. Since I will have to be going back and forth to Lahey Clinic Monday and Tuesday I have made arrangements to stop at the Statler Hotel. I will call you as soon as I arrive at the hotel. I have just corresponded with Mrs. Levenberg, and she stated that you have already talked with her concerning the hour that you will have me at Jordan Hall. 

I am looking forward with great anticipation to a rich fellowship with you and your family and the whole Boston community.

Sincerely yours,
Martin L. King, Jr.

MLK:mlb

1. Excerpts of King’s speech, which Ballou sent on 25 October 1956 to Selma Levenberg of the Forum, suggest that this address was similar to “The ‘New Negro’ of the South: Behind the Montgomery Story,” published in the June 1956 issue of the Socialist Call (see pp. 280-286 in this volume). 

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.

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