The Simsbury Free Library is home to a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and part of the MLK in Connecticut project.

The library features five panels with information about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King came to Simsbury in the summers of 1944 and 1947 as a college student and worked in the tobacco fields that are still in town.

In letters home to his mother, King talked about going to the movies in Connecticut and about going to get a milkshake at the drugstore. The buildings are all still here.

He would go to restaurants in Hartford, and he would hang out with friends. He also sang in the choir at the Church of Christ in town and was part of the youth ministry there.

Jack Grossman, social media director for MLK in CT, says King's time in Connecticut was a glimpse of what like could be like for Black people living in segregation going on in the South where he lived.

"Being able to worship in the same place as white people and eat next to white people and riding the train car with white people - it was just a new experience for him," Grossman

says.

Students worked on the MLK in Connecticut project for 10 years.