A picture is worth a lifetime of words. So it is with the famous photograph from 1964 taken at a civil rights rally at Soldier Field in Chicago, featuring Fr Theodore Hesburgh, the long-serving president of the University of Notre Dame, and Martin Luther King, arms locked in solidarity while singing “We Shall Overcome”.
Notre Dame loves the Soldier Field photograph, and never tires of using it in its promotion of Hesburgh. The picture brought together various elements of the phenomenon that was Fr Hesburgh: priestly service in the public square, ecumenical relationships, passionate commitment to civil rights, and proximity to the liberal establishment. After Hesburgh died in 2015, a statue of the scene was erected in South Bend, Indiana, the civic home of Notre Dame.
