His 300-student, K-12 school used hand-me-down textbooks from the school for whites. And state troopers escorted him around the University of Alabama when officials there tried to recruit him to play basketball.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, next to my parents, was probably one of the greatest people in my life,” the 54-year-old Lawrence man told hundreds of South Junior High School students Friday.

The school’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration included a partial reading of King’s “I have a Dream” speech, a talk from Stallworth, and band and choir performances. The ceremony ended with many of the students holding hands and singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Ninth-grader Isaiah Cardona said afterward it was good to hear Stallworth’s stories.

“I’d heard about that stuff, but I hadn’t heard anyone say it in person,” the 14-year-old said.

Stallworth played basketball for Kansas University from 1969 to 1972.

His most-remembered performance was the 50 points he scored against Missouri in 1972, which still stands as a KU record for points scored in a conference game.

He went on to play five years in the NBA for the Seattle SuperSonics and the then-New Orleans Jazz.

He now oversees budgets for the KU Design & Construction Management department. His jersey will be retired Jan. 31 at the Kansas-Missouri game.

He emphasized to students his parents made him put sports after academics and music.

“If I didn’t have A’s in school, the ball was going in the back room,” he told the crowd.

In an interview after the ceremony, Stallworth talked more about his years growing up. His father was the principal of the all-black school he grew up in, and his mother was a teacher there.

“I’m a product of the segregated South,” said the 1968 high school graduate. “Like, ‘Be home before the sun goes down because you could get hurt.’ If you were … in the wrong neighborhood, you might get murdered.”

His parents saved enough money to send him to a music camp at KU in 1967, the summer between Stallworth’s junior and senior years of high school.

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While at the camp, Stallworth played pickup games with KU basketball players. They were impressed with his abilities and told their coach.

“I get back to my dorm; my counselor calls me,” Stallworth recalled. “He said, ‘Do you know … (KU basketball coach) Ted Owens? He’s been calling up here, looking for you.'”

Stallworth suspected a prank by someone else in the music camp.

“So now I’m thinking, ‘Who’s playing the joke?'”

Stallworth and Owens talked before Stallworth left camp. Owens told him he wanted to offer a full scholarship to KU.

“I said, ‘Is this some kind of joke?'” Stallworth said. “He said, ‘We’re very serious about this.'”

In contrast to playing pickup basketball with KU students, Stallworth said he never met the team on his recruiting trip to the University of Alabama.

He was the first black player the University of Alabama attempted to recruit, he said. In 1968, he was the first black player to play in the Alabama All-Star game with the state’s top high school basketball players.

He said it was a big deal that he turned down the University of Alabama’s offer but accepted KU’s.

“They were pretty insistent about me coming to school there,” he said. “They thought that because they offered to a black kid in the South, that I should go there.”

He said he was grateful for King, who was murdered the same year Stallworth graduated from high school.

“He didn’t just preach it in the papers or on television. He was out in the field doing the work,” Stallworth said.

King’s birthday is today. He would have been 76.