Sarah Willie-LeBreton, the 12th president of Smith College and featured speaker for the 40th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Sunday, Jan. 26, has special cherished family memories of the revered civil rights leader.
Professor Charles Willie, left, with Martin Luther King Jr. during Dr. King’s visit to Syracuse University in the summer of 1965.
Willie-LeBreton’s father, Charles V. Willie G’57, H’92, Syracuse University’s first Black full professor, department chair and vice president, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were friends since their time as classmates at Morehouse College.
When King spoke on the Syracuse University campus on July 15, 1965, Charles Willie introduced his friend to a crowd of more than 1,000 people.
Willie told the audience that if he and his wife, Mary Sue (Conklin) Willie ’59, were ever blessed with a male heir, they would name him Martin: “in honor of Martin Buber, whose life was devoted to reconciling gentile and Jew, and in honor of Martin King, whose life is devoted to reconciling Negroes and whites.”
The comment proved to be prophetic. As the Willies escorted King back to the Syracuse airport, King asked Mary Sue if she was expecting. When Mary Sue said yes, King leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “My mother didn’t wash that cheek for a week!” says Willie-LeBreton, who was 2 years old at the time.
Five months later, the couple welcomed a son, Martin.
The anecdote demonstrates how interconnected we all are, says Willie-LeBreton, who will reflect on King’s legacy during the Jan. 26 celebration in the JMA Wireless Dome. It also perfectly represents the theme of this year’s celebration, “Living History.”
“It’s hard to put into words how special this is. I was so moved to receive the invitation, and it did feel like a full circle moment, knowing that my dad had invited Dr. King to speak at Syracuse University and now I’m speaking on campus as part of this special celebration of Dr. King,” says Willie-LeBreton, a distinguished administrator, scholar and sociologist who studies social inequality and race and ethnicity. “There are all these wonderful and lovely connections, and I am excited to honor Dr. King.”
Tickets for the annual event, the largest of its kind on any college campus, are still available for the program.
Sarah Willie-LeBreton
Willie-LeBreton sat down with SU News to discuss her father’s impact, how she cultivated her leadership skills and what inspires her work in higher education.
I was inspired by and enthralled by my dad’s career from an early age. He came home every night from work, which until I was 10 years old was from Syracuse University, and talked about his workday, the issues that were going on on campus and the topics he was wrestling with around the politics of campus life. I found that fascinating.
Most of our family vacations would happen around sociology conferences, and at a certain point I started attending some of the sessions, especially the ones where he presented. I remember feeling not just proud of him—he was really an extraordinary thinker and speaker—but being pulled into the topics of the conversations he was having, the dialogue between the panelists and the questions coming from the audience.
As an interracial couple who met in 1959 and married in 1962, my parents faced a good deal of discrimination. But they did not believe in shielding us from the difficult conflicts and conversations they experienced. They wanted us to see how they engaged those conflicts.
Charles and Mary Sue Willie and their daughter, Sarah Willie-LeBreton.
My siblings and I were not allowed to storm out of a room or slam a door if we had an argument or a conflict. The expectation was we would hash out the issue together. We had a family council that met Sunday nights to talk about our issues, but we also watched our parents engage in both community building and conflict resolution as part of their personal and professional lives. Seeing how our parents willingly engaged with conflict and searched for a resolution resonated with us.
My parents expected us to share our special skills with others, they expected us to continue to grow throughout our lives and that, as part of that growth, we would become leaders in our communities.
I’ve long been interested in inequality, whether it’s racial, sex/gender, class, sexual orientation, religion or nationality. That led me to teach courses on race and ethnicity on every campus where I have spent time. Along the way, I got very interested in working with departments about how they can better serve students and the college as a whole. That combination led me to be thinking more about what the student, faculty and staff experience is like on campus in terms of inequality.
Excellence in research, scholarship, creativity and the quality of the residential experience for students depends on having people from a variety of backgrounds, a variety of learning styles and a variety of approaches to the different kinds of intellectual conundrums with which we wrestle.
