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By Dan Snyder '17

Bowdoin marks historic anniversary

Fifty years ago, on May 5 and 6, Bowdoin welcomed chief civil rights strategist Bayard Rustin, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to campus. Rustin spoke on May 5, followed by Dr. King who spoke the next day.

According to Dr. Fred Stoddard Jr. ’64, the leader of the student group that invited the speakers to campus, Rustin had an equal if not greater effect than Dr. King on the Bowdoin College students. According to an article on the college’s website, after he spoke, Rustin remained with a group of about 100 students, answering questions and chatting until 3 a.m. On the discussions with Rustin, Stoddard once wrote in an article, “We were at that intense and wide-ranging discussion, which explored with students and faculty the strategies that Rustin used in his organization of civil rights protests.”

King gave a poetic, hour-long speech before a crowd of 1,100 people. Early in the speech he said, “We have been able to see the walls of racial segregation crumble.” He later continued, “To put it figuratively and in biblical language, we have broken loose from the Egypt of slavery. We have moved through the wilderness of legal segregation, and now we stand on the border of the promised land of integration…I am absolutely convinced that the system of segregation is on its deathbed, and the only thing uncertain about it now is how costly the segregationist will make the funeral. We’ve come a long, long way. We have a long, long way to go in our nation.”

Perhaps the most monumental moment in the speech was when Dr. King proclaimed, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.” According to Stoddard, the crowd answered with “thunderous applause.”

The Bowdoin radio station, WBOR, recorded this speech, but the recording was missing for many years. Fortunately, the library’s processing archivist, Caroline Mosely, found the tape and had it transferred to CD and transcribed.

 

Bates and Colby honor fallen players

This past April, the Colby and Bates men’s lacrosse teams played a game in honor of late players from both teams. The game—the final regular season contest for both teams—was entitled the Flahive-McDuffee Memorial Game.

Derrik Flahive was a Colby College student-athlete and a standout offensive player for the White Mules. He drowned while abroad in Chile in 2011. Morgan McDuffee, the former solo captain of the Bobcats lacrosse team, was stabbed to death in Lewiston in 2002 while walking home from a party.

Colby head coach Jack Sandler and Bates head coach Peter Lasagna decided a memorial game would be a good way of honoring the fallen players and raising money for their respective charities.The Flahive Family Foundation promotes health and wellness throughout the world, and Morgan’s Fund does anti-violence work with young people. Both coaches have a connection with McDuffee: Sandler was a classmate of his at Bates, and Lasagna was his coach.

The game took place at Colby and was close the whole way through until Colby scored three goals in the fourth quarter to win 12-9. T-shirts were sold to commemorate the inaugural Flahive-McDuffee game and the proceeds were split between the players’ foundations.

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