Claybourne Carson was 19 when he began to immerse himself in the movement against social injustices and white supremacy in 1963.
Fresh out of his first year of college at the University of California in Los Angeles, Carson said he could hardly imagine how life could change.
Following the 1963 national student conference, Carson hitchhiked his way from Indiana to Washington D.C. to attend the March on Washington, lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. It was his first encounter with the black leader and an experience that Carson said shaped his life.
"I was reluctant to go (to Washington)," Carson said. "Like many Americans, I thought the movement was composed of King and the others who followed blindly. I quickly learned that King was trying to keep up with the youthful activists that he was supposed to be leading."
Carson shared his life-changing experience, as well as knowledge he has gained through work on the King Papers Project during his keynote address, which concluded the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Celebration. More than 250 people from Ball State and the Muncie community attended Tuesday's presentation in Emens Auditorium, which was sponsored by the BSU Multicultural Center.
More than 40 years after the March on Washington, Carson has authored several scholarly publications that focus on black protest movements and political thought since World War II. Carson is the director of the King Papers Project, which has published five volumes of papers written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Carson said to celebrate the history-shaping work of King, Jr., people should celebrate the grassroots organizers like Ella Baker, Claudette Colvin, Barbara Johns and others who transformed King into the man whose achievements we celebrate on the third Monday of January.
"I have had 20 years to see the struggle through King's perspective and I have come to appreciate his unique qualities of leadership," Carson said. "King has become wiser as I have become older. I believe King saw himself as a symbol of a movement; as a symbol of group that he did not initiate and did not control. "
One point that inspired Leslie Bruggeman, a second year senior majoring in school counseling, addressed how one person can make a difference.
"What I took away from the speech was when he talked about standing up for small things," she said. "It was like a self-examination. You cannot care about what other people think."
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