Princeton's Southern Alumni Attack Slated Visit of Martin Luther King

Several of Princeton University's Southern alumni are criticizing the scheduled appearance of the Reverend Martin Luther King in that university's chapel, it was learned yesterday. King, a Negro integration leader, spoke in Cambridge earlier this month without any reported incidents of popular disfavor.

Princeton alumni have attacked King's visit in personal complaints and letters. One letter cited disapproval of a letter King wrote to a Tennessee newspaper urging that federal statutes concerning civil rights over-rule state laws. Another letter cited King as a "revolutionary."

Ernest Gordon, Dean of the Princeton Chapel, is still upholding the invitation to King. Supported by President Robert F. Goheen, Gordon defended his right as dean to have a "free pulpit" and to invite whomever he pleased to speak. Gordon also denied that King was a revolutionary, and cited him instead as having "prevented a revolution from taking place." He called King's views "thoroughly Christian."