Membership is open to all who are interested in Stanford history and includes the following benefits:
- Annual subscription to the society’s journal, Sandstone & Tile, mailed to members three times a year
- Invitations to free on-campus programs on aspects of Stanford history
- Member discounts on society (and some other) publications
Membership Categories
- Current Stanford Student $10
- Society Member $50
- Contributing Member $150
- Supporting Member $250
- Sustaining Member $500
- Benefactor Circle $1,000
- Historian Circle $5,000
The King Legacy At Stanford
by Clayborne Carson
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In April 1967, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at Memorial Auditorium on his second visit to Stanford. |
Martin Luther King first came to Stanford University in 1964, during the buildup to the Mississippi Summer voting rights campaign. There is no recording of his speech, only a newspaper account in The Stanford Daily. Remarkably, his visit did not attract a great deal of attention, which says something about where things were in 1964.
Three years later, however, when King came to Stanford a second time, in April 1967, he filled Memorial Auditorium. The recording of his speech on the issue of poverty is available in the Stanford University Archives. Although King had a reputation for being a wonderful orator, that speech wasn’t especially memorable. The audience was very polite; there was applause, but you can tell from the recording that he was not really into it. His oratory, in the African American tradition, was always based on interacting with an audience. What made the “I Have a Dream Speech” take off, for example, is that the audience was really into the speech and responding to it. King’s tendency before white audiences, however, was to be much more formal, kind of aloof, and to stick to his prepared remarks, which he wasn’t particularly good at delivering. He much preferred to be extemporaneous.
(read more in the Winter 2009 Sandstone & Tile publication)
