Martin Luther King at Yale, 1959 and 1964

King delivered his speech, “The Future of Integration,” on January 14, 1959, during a visit to Yale at the invitation of the Undergraduate Lecture Committee. The speech, along with those of other invited speakers in the lecture series hosted by Dwight Hall during the 1958-1959 academic year, was published by Yale University in the compilation Crises in Modern America, edited by H. John Heinz III.

Honorary degree recipients at Yale University’s 1964 Commencement on the steps of Woodbridge Hall.

First row, left to right: King; John Sherman Cooper; W. Averell Harriman; Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr; Lynn Fontanne; Philip C. Jessup; Winfred E. Garrison

Second Row, left to right: Philip H. Abelson; Edward S. Mason; Victor F. Weisskopf; Alfred Lunt; R. Sargent Shriver Jr; Julian P. Boyd; Edouard A. Stackpole

In the letter below, King writes to Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr, thanking Yale for his honorary degree. King  expresses the "renewed courage and vigor to carry on in the struggle to make the American dream a reality" that the honor instilled in him.