Historical Marker Recognizes MLK's 1966 Visit to SMU

Outside SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium stands a new marker for a memory nearly forgotten.

It’s recognition that history happened on campus.

Classmates and recent graduates Darion Taylor and Matt Hutnyan worked with other students to receive historical designation from the state to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1966 visit to campus.

It was an event lost to time until an audio recording surfaced decades later and current students had the opportunity to listen to Dr. King’s words.

Taylor said after listening to the remarks he was re-inspired to get involved in student life and the push for equality. He was later elected student body president.

“I was inspired that he would choose SMU to come to and I think from that moment I realized we needed to recognize not only MLK but the people who came before us,” Taylor said.

Invited by SMU students who attended Dr. King’s successful march from Selma to Montgomery, King spoke for 57 minutes on why segregation must end and the need for racial equality on the predominately white campus.

“It’s just exciting – exciting to think that in 1966 it was students that brought Dr. King here and it was students that put in the work to get his marker here to be a physical sign of the significance of the speech itself, but also Dr. King’s enduring legacy past and present,” said Matt Hutnyan, a 2021 SMU graduate.

The university has recovered only one image of the historic speech.

The photo shows Dr. King at the podium and then-student body president Charles Cox sitting behind him.

“You could hear a pin drop. He commanded the attention of all of us who listened to him,” Cox, a 1967 SMU graduate, said. “It was the most remarkable speech I’d ever heard in my life and I thought it that day and recently listened to it for this event and it still is.”

Cox was one of the students who formally invited Dr. King to SMU. Cox said previous invitations to the civil rights leader were rescinded after the administration received strong discouragement from Dallas police and the FBI following JFK’s assassination.

On March 17, 1966, Cox greeted Dr. King at Love Field and drove him with a police escort to visit with local clergy before they came to campus.

“What I remember about him in the car was how down-to-earth he was. He was interested in our lives,” Cox said. “He had a sense of humor and he was relaxed. He had just spoken two days prior [in other cities] so he said ‘I’m kind of tired.’ He sure didn’t act like it when he spoke.”

Dr. King's visit to Dallas that day was brief. Before his speech, he met privately with SMU football player Jerry LeVias, the first Black athlete to earn an athletic scholarship in the Southwest Conference.

Now through the help of two generations, six decades apart, the permanent marker will recognize Dr. King’s visit and a call to action for future generations.

“Dr. King was invited here by students. It’s the students that took it among themselves to bring about an agent of change on campus and that’s not something that happened 50 or 70 years ago, but it’s something that can keep happening every single day.”

Listen and hear Dr. King’s 1966 SMU speech here.