Centennial Hall

Centennial Hall is located on the campus of the University of Arizona, in Tucson, and was the campus auditorium, designed by campus architect Roy Place and using the signature red brick that is a part of almost all UA buildings. The auditorium opened in 1937 and presented musical programs, as well as stage plays, to the student community as well as to the general public. The auditorium was also used as a general lecture hall.From 1947-1984, the auditorium hosted the Tucson Sunday Evening Forum. Many prominent American figures appeared at the Forum, including Martin Luther King Jr, Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, and Walter Kronkite.According to historian David Leighton, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke twice at the Sunday Evening Forum. His first visit was in 1959, where he gave a talk called “A Great Time To Be Alive” to a capacity crowd of mostly activists and university faculty and students. In his talk, "he warned that the U.S. faced a difficult challenge to achieve racial integration but predicted that within five years much of the mass resistance of the time would be gone..." His second trip, to what is now called Centennial Hall, was in 1962, and his topic was a “Stride Toward Freedom,” in which he spoke to the success and failures of the Civil Rights Movement up to that point including the end of segregation, in 150 eating places in the Deep South and the need for African Americans to register to vote. He was honored at a reception following his second talk and is known to have been paid $1,000 for this speaking engagement.