Item Info

Creation Date: 8/4/1965
Historic Street Address: Philadelphia International Airport
Media Type: Photographic Negatives
Source: Print and Picture Collection
Notes:

Image taken by Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photographer Charles T. Higgins.  Notes on the negative's envelope read:  "Dr. Martin Luther King leaves Philadelphia International Airport, National Airlines; Aug. 4, 1965"

This is a photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., boarding a plane to leave Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia International Airport, on August 4, 1965.  The occasion of his visit to Philadelphia was to lend his support to the months-long protests to end racial segregation at Girard College. The protests had been initiated outside Girard College on May 1, by Cecil B. Moore, then president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP; by August, the protests had gained sufficient attention for Dr. King to add a stop in Philadelphia to his national tour. 

On August 3, Dr. King addressed the picketers in front of the substantial wall that surrounds the school, describing it as “a kind of Berlin Wall to keep God’s colored children out.”  The picketing ended on December 17, but only after a lengthy challenge through the courts did the school finally officially desegregate, on May 23, 1968.

Geocode Latitude: Geocode Longitude:-75.243983
Geocode Latitude:39.875804

Creator Name: Charles Higgins - Photographer