My family has an odd association with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. We never met the man, although he was similar in age to my dad, and like my dad, never saw 40.  As native New Englanders, we spent no time in the South growing up, but MLK, Jr., it turns out, came up here: to Simsbury, CT, to pick tobacco while a high school student, as did my brothers and my sisters (not me, I got a plum job in a pro shop, where I knew nothing about golf, but had a very good time).  When MLK was growing up, there was an arrangement for Morehouse College to provide workers to the Cullen Tobacco company in Simsbury, the town next to the town where I grew up. This was a chance for the students to earn money in exchange for providing cheap, motivated labor. Subsequently, the company hired migrant Puerto Rican workers for a time, and then local high school kids for picking and sewing the leaves, including my siblings.  A hot, dirty job, as I recall from their complaints, and smelly.  MLK, Jr. came twice, at 15 and again at 18; in his letters home, he says the food and work are all right, and that he sings in the local black church and goes into Hartford for some fun. He also says that after coming North, being free to travel where he likes and to eat where he wants, it’s hard to adjust back to the segregated South.

 I had no idea of this while growing up, although we drove by the tobacco fields regularly, going into Simsbury for clothes, piano lessons, the orthodontist, etc., passing many of the same establishments MLK, Jr. would have known from twenty years earlier. It turns out the senior housing where my mom lived for a time is not a mile from those tobacco fields, and we’ve driven by the development on Firetown Road which stands where a dorm housed a hundred Morehouse students, including MLK, Jr., back when he was Michael King. The place where he went to watch movies, Eno Hall, now sponsors activities for seniors.  Having lived in the area for over thirty years, it seems we would have met some local residents who remembered the black boys and girls, including Mahalia Jackson and Thurgood Marshall, who came into town on a Saturday off.  But, if so, none imagined that any of those young people were destined to play a part in American history.

 Two summers as a teenager are a significant amount of time. And yet, I didn’t know until recently that we had trod the same paths as MLK, Jr. and that my siblings worked the same punishing job that he had. I only came across this snippet of information a few years ago, reading a children’s biography of his life at my son’s school library that simply filled a gap in a time line.

 Thinking of MLK, Jr. recently, I googled his name and Simsbury, CT.  Turns out there is a movement afoot to create a statue of 15 year old MLK, Jr. to be placed somewhere in the downtown area, in honor of his stay in town, his contribution to local industry, and perhaps, the transformation of his views into the possibilities of life without segregation. 

 I think of Flannery O’Connor, “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”  As I grow older, the connections come unbidden.  There is no vacuum, we are all in this together, sometimes closer than we know.