On Jan. 22, 1960, more than 1,500 people crammed into the Memorial Union. Though it was bitterly cold outside, the Great Hall grew hot with anticipation. The crowd was there to see a man who would become one of the greatest civil rights leaders in U.S. history.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the ISU community on that winter night 43 years ago, Farwell Brown stood among the spectators in the packed balcony.

“There was an element of excitement,” said Brown, who became the official historian for the city of Ames in 1986. “It was crowded. There was a very good turnout on that night.”

King was the final speaker for Religion in Life Week, which was then a yearly program sponsored by Iowa State and hosted by the Student Religious Council, an organization that no longer exists.

In his address, according to 1960 Daily staff reports, King said, “the Emancipation Proclamation freed the Negro from slavery and established him as a legal fact, but not as a man. The Negro had to rise above crippling illiteracy.”

Blacks should not defeat or humiliate whites, King said, but gain their confidence. Black supremacy would be as dangerous as white supremacy.

In his speech, King said he believed a revolution would never be attained by simply sitting around and waiting. People must begin to think and act now, he said.

Brown said King was well received by the crowd in the Great Hall, which was nearly 99 percent Caucasian. “The vast majority of people in Ames wanted to hear what he said and were very sympathetic to him,” he said.

Joseph Hraba, professor of sociology, said King was somewhat of a controversial figure, and well-known to the American public by 1960. “He was a national figure by then,” Hraba said.

Hraba said students of today can learn from King by “standing up for what you believe in terms of social justice for people within a nation.”

Brown said what he remembers most about King’s address is the manner in which he spoke that night in the Memorial Union. “[Dr. King] was totally involved in what he was saying,” he said. “He spoke with a great deal of emotion, a great deal of feeling. He was a man who was a very able thinker; he thought on his feet.”

Brown also attended a second speech by King on the morning of Jan. 23, 1960, that was held in the Gallery Room of the Memorial Union.

Decades later, Brown wrote about King’s visit to Iowa State in “Ames In Words and Pictures: Further Tales and Personal Memories, Book Two.”

In his memoir, Brown wrote, “King’s sincerity, his deliberate, clear enunciation of every word and his deep feeling came through. Today, I cannot recall much of what he said, but I will never forget how he said it. More important, perhaps, is the fact that I had heard a man who had insight and a timeless feel for his message.”

Brown is a third-generation resident of Ames and graduated from Iowa State College in 1934 with degrees in agricultural economics and history.