People from all over the world travel to visit this special place: Big Game Fishing Club, Cottage 3, on the tiny island of Bimini. In the 1960s, you could sometimes find Martin Luther King Jr. there, too. This island had an outsized impact on King’s activism.
King first visited Bimini in 1964, where he crafted his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. A few years later he returned to write what would be his final speech, “I Have Been to the Mountaintop.”
Ansil Saunders was a champion bonefisher and boat builder in Bimini, but when MLK was in town, he was just a friend. Saunders guided MLK to secluded areas where King could think and write undisturbed.
King also inspired the islanders. Black Bahamians resisted the rule of the Bay Street Boys, who had gerrymandered the island to keep control of the government. The islanders finally drove the Bay Street Boys from power in the 1970s.
The people of Bimini inspired Martin Luther King Jr., and he inspired them in return. Supporting our shared Blackness – no matter where we are in the world– enables us to get each other free.