BERLIN, Md. - On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a Berlin woman, Laverne Eagleson, is sharing her memories of a friendship she had with the civil rights icon during the 1950s.
The photograph that captures this moment in history is the focus of a new film, "The Boston Photograph," which screened at the Ocean City Center for the Arts over the weekend.
Eagleson, now 92, first met King in Boston prior to the height of the Civil Rights Movement. The photograph, which was taken at Boston Garden, shows Eagleson and her husband David alongside a young Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott-King.
Eagleson, who spent much of her life as a singer at her church, recalls that even then, King was passionate about fighting for civil rights and ending segregation.
She said, "Even then, he talked about civil rights and what he was going to do so far as segregation. I just have the feeling that afterwards the four of us got together, now how we landed in Boston Gardens, I'm not quite sure."
Eagleson also remembered that before King married his wife Coretta, he had invited her out for dinner a couple of times, but she had not had any romantic intentions towards him.
She said, "He did invite me out a couple of times I think it was, but just to dinner. Now he might have had something in his mind, I do believe he was looking for a wife. I really do. But I didn't have any romantic... intentions toward him. I never did."
Eagleson later lost contact with King, but she says she was like many others, devastated on the day of his assassination. She said, "Oh that was a bad day. That was a sad day. It's not so much that I knew him, it's the fact that he had been out there and put his life out there and it was taken away from him."
The photo of Eagleson alongside Martin Luther King Jr. is the focus of a new film "The Boston Photograph" which screened at the Ocean City Center for the Arts over the weekend.
