Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 funeral procession added another poignant image to a year of international upheaval: his coffin moving slowly through the streets of Atlanta set upon a mule-drawn funeral wagon. Six years later in symbolic reference, the offering at Loomis Chaffee’s June 2 Baccalaureate service was gathered into a small wooden wagon. In a rare high school appearance, Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, addressed the senior class and urged the students to “become involved, help solve the problems of black and poor people in this country.”

Duncan Newcomer, school chaplain and head of the Philosophy and Religion Department, brought Mrs. King to campus. “It was like talking to a saint,” Duncan recalls of his initial telephone call to Mrs. King. Standing in the Deans Office of Founders Hall in early spring of 1974, he eagerly hoped that she might honor the school with a visit. Duncan met with Mrs. King in Atlanta later that spring and was struck by a “profound and graceful bearing about her.” Both were optimistic that the school could assist the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change with its work to eradicate poverty, racism and war, and Mrs. King agreed to deliver that year’s Baccalaureate address. “If you are convinced that there are people at your school who care and that there is a beginning of some type support for the King Center, then I will be honored to speak to the Class of 1974,” she said. The LOG reported that educational projects, internships, a three-year fundraising plan and a visit from Mrs. King’s eldest daughter, Yolanda, also were planned.

“The name and dreams of Dr. King have not been new to our school,” Duncan wrote in a March 5 article in The Log. Students read King’s writings in their courses, and the school honored King’s birthday. While the national holiday would not be declared until 1986, students and faculty on the Island took time for reflection and education on King’s life beginning in the early 1970s, a tradition that continues to this day. In 1974, the program included documentaries on King’s life, chapel talks and an informal discussion with Silas Davis, a friend from King’s teenage summer of farm work in nearby Simsbury, Connecticut.

Yolanda King, then a sophomore at Smith College, spoke to a large, receptive audience in the chapel on May 3. She visited classes and gave an interview to The Log. Her message was clear: “If you lose your culture, you lose your sense of somebodyness.” She challenged the school to hire more black faculty members, to invite more black speakers and to embrace racial diversity’s contributions to the Loomis Chaffee environment. Yolanda also explained the work of the King Center. Founded by her mother only months after King’s death, the center by 1974 focused on crime prevention, voter registration and fighting poverty. Yolanda noted: “[I]t could not be a memorial to my father unless it had a program, because he did not just talk, he acted.”

The school joined a national fundraising campaign for the center that spring. Senior Penn Ritter took the helm and announced that a “mammoth car wash” would be held along with a magazine drive, a faculty cocktail party and a concert. Palmer social room was transformed into an “improvised bakery sale room” as Loomis Chaffee women “turned their hands to brewing, baking and making sandwiches.” According to The Log. Spring Day proceeds and the Baccalaureate offering added to the efforts, all together raising thousands of dollars for the King Center; Penn called these “dollars for change.”

The Confluence reported that some students and faculty were “outraged” about the fundraising and believed that the school’s relationship with the King Center was based on “money rather than on…beliefs.” Penn met these concerns with a chapel talk expressing unequivocal support for the center. “Loomis and the rest of the country should be in the same neighborhood when it comes to helping the poor and the oppressed… . The money is going to help build a national center dedicated to the proposition that ‘ all men are created equal in the eyes of all men.’”

That spring’s “intense happenings,” in the words of The Confluence, heightened anticipation for Mrs. King’s address. Speaking to 800 guests in respectful, hushed silence in Chaffee gym, she opened with greetings from Yolanda and impressions of the senior class. “[Y]our countenances are bright with hope, bright with promise… . I further believe that I see in your faces the resolve to have in the beloved community the spirit of cooperation.” Using her husband’s words and historical references, Mrs. King urged the audience to consider how individuals “chart the course and character of this nation… . For, in order to be free, you must assume some responsibility.” To close, Mrs. King drew on the computer language of the era, inviting each senior to ponder the “great printout [that ] will be the story of your life… . You and only you will determine what your printout will read.”

Although the relationship between Loomis Chaffee and the King Center moved little beyond the events of spring 1974, the school’s “printout” records an important dialogue about the value of beliefs.