To mark the fifti­eth anniver­sary of the death of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., a Philadel­phia TV sta­tion inter­viewed Quak­er Nor­val Reece: Bucks Coun­ty Quak­er, Civ­il Rights Activist Reflects On Time With MLK

Reece is a proud Quak­er and believes it’s his Quak­er roots that sent him to Dr. King’s side. “I was raised to believe all peo­ple are equal, are born equal, cre­at­ed equal,” he said. Reece met King in 1967 at the old Robert Mor­ris Hotel in Philadel­phia. He spent sev­er­al hours with the civ­il rights icon. Reece says that night he, King and a few oth­ers planned a pover­ty march for the fol­low­ing spring, but King nev­er made it.

Nor­val was an activist with AFSC back in his youth, served as a Penn­syl­va­nia sec­re­tary of com­merce, and became a cable tele­vi­sion entre­pre­neur. He’s pret­ty ubiq­ui­tous in Quak­er cir­cles these days, link­ing the activist and entre­pre­neur­ial in inter­est­ing ways. My favorite part of the video is when they casu­al­ly redis­play a pic­ture they had blurred out near the begin­ning (the one in the pre­view) and don’t both­er nam­ing the guy walk­ing just ahead of him.