01/19/2026
Today, we share our appreciation for the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose words, courage, compassion, unwavering commitment and actions continue to inspire hope, equality, and service! As a 15-year-old freshman at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, King spent the summer of 1944 working as a farmhand at the Cullman Brothers shade to***co farm in Simsbury,CT as part of a tuition fund-raising seasonal employment program. In 1947, he ventured north again alongside a group of fellow students to work those same to***co fields. These summers in Connecticut were eye-opening for King, to say the least, as it exposed him for the first time to a world outside of the racially divided Jim Crow South. As noted by the Associated Press, it was during these summers that King, who was later ordained as a minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1948 at the age of 19, ultimately decided to attend Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. As King explained in his application to the seminary, he “felt an inescapable urge to serve society” during the summer of 1944. “In short, I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape.”Dr. King, publicly supported farmworkers, especially migrant and low-wage agricultural laborers. In 1968, he endorsed César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) and supported the grape boycott, linking farmworkers’ struggles to the civil rights movement. We’re inspired by a life well lived—one that changed history and continues to inspire hope.
