Martin Luther King, Jr. Labored in Connecticut as a Teenager [VIDEO]

SIMSBURY, CT — As America celebrates the accomplishments and sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Patch has re-discovered a video documentary produced by Simsbury High School students that highlights the late civil rights leader's time he spent working in Connecticut during a pair of his teenage summers.

The video, produced during the 2010-11 school year, chronicles King's work experience in north-central Connecticut in the summers of 1944 and 1947, when he labored at the Cullman Brothers shade tobacco fields in Simsbury.

According to the Simsbury Historical Society, Cullman Brothers had a working arrangement with Morehouse College of Atlanta, Ga. that was beneficial for each. Salaries for roughly 100 summer workers from the college went toward tuition and board, ensuring a motivated workforce, while the students encountered non-segregated living and social conditions, many for the first time.

The students rose at 6 a.m., then worked under the tobacco netting from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. A communal dinner followed, then recreation time was available until a mandated bedtime of 10 p.m.

King first came to Simsbury as a 15-year-old in 1944, while trying to gain early admission to Morehouse, then returned at age 18 in 1947 as a full-fledged Morehouse student.

Video credit: SHS students, posted by JCM4414 via YouTube

Photo credit: Dick DeMarsico/Library of Congress/Public Domain