Martin Luther King, Jr.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

Alain Leroy Locke was born here in 1886 and became one of the most influential interpreters of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of Black art and letters in the 1920s. A Harvard graduate and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, he taught for decades at Howard University while championing Black writers, artists, and musicians. His editing and criticism helped define the movement he called the flourishing of the 'New Negro.'

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2022

On November 17, 1967, thousands of Philadelphia students walked out of their schools and gathered at the Board of Education building to demand an education that reflected their own histories. The peaceful demonstration met police violence, but it stands as one of the earliest and largest youth-led actions in the national ethnic studies movement. Decades later, in 2005, the students' vision was realized when Philadelphia became the first U.S. district to require African American studies.

Upland, PA · est. 1992

As a young student at Crozer Theological Seminary, Martin Luther King, Jr. earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. These three formative years sharpened the philosophy of nonviolent resistance that would guide the civil rights movement. A little more than a decade later, that work earned him the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

Springfield Township, PA · est. 1951

Quakers have gathered on this ground since 1686, only a few years after William Penn founded his colony as a haven for the Society of Friends. The stone meetinghouse standing today dates to 1851, but the congregation's roots reach back into the earliest decades of Pennsylvania. In 1832 the community added a school and library here, and generations earlier a young Benjamin West—who would become one of America's first internationally celebrated painters—worshipped with this Meeting as a boy.