Video

The Seventeenth Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration took place on January 18, 1991, and featured Dr. Benjamin Hooks as keynote speaker. Four students presented a youth perspective on the significance of the celebration in their own lives.

Transcript

MODERATOR: Good afternoon, and welcome to MIT, we're going to alter our program a little bit this afternoon. And I'm going to ask Reverend Bernard Campbell to come and give us a prayer for peace in light of the current situation in the Persian Gulf. Reverend Campbell?

CAMPBELL: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Many here in this room are deeply troubled and anxious about the events in the Persian Gulf. Some of you have sons and daughters, husbands or wives, friends, relatives in the desert of Saudi Arabia, on ships in the Gulf or the Red Sea, or in forward surgical facilities waiting to receive the injured. Thoughtful people grieve for the loss and maiming of life, whatever the nationality, the language, the religion, or the involvement in this conflict.

Yet today, we gather here, to celebrate the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.

READ MORE

DOWNLOAD PDF

The Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Center 

Rev. Jesse Jackson at MIT Peace Rally Against Gulf War, 14 January 1991

Rev. Jesse Jackson during the inauguration of the The Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Center at MIT on the eve of the U.N. deadline against Iraq, speaking out against the threat of imminent war in the Persian Gulf.

Student Anti-War Activity: The Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Center

Peace activists intend to stay, The Tech, 12 Feb 1991

Anti-war activists who have set up an information center on the third floor of the Julius A. Stratton '23 Student Center say they hope to continue to remain there despite some opposition by students who say they are occupying space designed for general student use.

"We're not obstructing any activities that occurred before the war," said Archon Fung G, a member of the MIT Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, which runs the information center.

The "Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Center," as the anti-war activists call it, began operations on Jan. 14, shortly before US-led forces launched Operation Desert Storm to evict Iraq from Kuwait. 

READ MORE