On June 5, 1963, an interracial crowd overflowed what is now the University of Saint Francis Performing Arts Center in downtown Fort Wayne, and waited anxiously for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to take the podium. His visit to our city was faced with plenty of adversity, as were many other facets of the Civil Rights Movement, yet Fort Wayne activists kept on fighting.
Throughout the 1960s, NAACP Youth marched outside of Northcrest shopping center to protest non-hiring of African Americans, the Ministerial Alliance led boycotts and walks down Calhoun to fight Fort Wayne Community School segregation, and other Civil Rights activists demonstrated outside of the Allen County Courthouse to display treatment of minorities in the community.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘what are you doing for others?’” –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.…