Just under three years before Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on the evening of April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, the famed American civil rights leader visited the island and delivered a stirring address at The University of the West Indies Valedictory Service.

The date was June 20, 1965, and Dr King was at the height of his civil rights activism — having already delivered more than 2,000 speeches, written five books, led huge marches against injustice in the United States, named Time magazine Man of the Year in 1963, arrested more than 20 times for his advocacy, and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Added Dr King: “...whenever anything new comes into history, it brings with it new challenges and new responsibilities, and the great challenge facing each of us today, the great challenge facing each of you who will have the privilege of graduating from this institution of learning, is to somehow stand before the opportunities of the moment and face the challenges of the hour with creativity, with commitment and with determination; and I would like to suggest some of the challenges that we face in our world today as a result of this emerging new age.

He pointed to the space flight conducted, a few days before his address, by American astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White who circled the Earth 66 times in four days — a distance of more than 1,600,000 miles — saying: “This is a small world, and all this tells us that we have a great deal of work to do.

Urging his audience to “go all out to achieve excellence” in their various fields of endeavour, Dr King referenced a lecture by American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1871 in which he said 'if a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, even if he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door'.

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