Marty Dobrow

Marty Dobrow has been a professor of Communications/Sports Journalism at Springfield College since the major began in the fall of 1999. He is the author of two previous books, one about college basketball and one about minor league baseball. Dobrow’s journalism has appeared in many publications, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and ESPN. He has won a number of national writing awards, and six of his stories have been honored in the annual Best American Sports Writing anthology.

Dobrow’s interest in this civil rights story began many years ago when he explored the fascinating circumstances regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1964 commencement address at Springfield College, an event that took place just after he had left a St. Augustine jail. Dobrow first wrote about that subject in Triangle (the college’s alumni magazine), and later in The Atlantic. He also shares that drama in a particularly compelling chapter of Original City, Original Sin. Dobrow felt it was important to do the launch event at a campus that he has now called his home-away-from-home for 28 years.