Becoming King

by Troy Jackson

  In one of his few extant early speeches, Daddy King called for a church that would “touch every phase of community life,” including politics. Citing Jesus’ commitment to proclaiming good news to the poor, brokenhearted, and captive, King Sr. articulated the necessity of embodying a “social gospel” that combined a concern for people’s souls with a dedication to meeting their physical needs: “How can people be happy without jobs, food, shelter and clothes? … God hasten the time when every minister will become a registered voter and a part of every movement for the betterment of our people.” In his acceptance speech as the new pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King Jr. turned to the same text his father had used, citing Jesus’ words in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, found in Luke 4: “I have felt with Jesus that the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that are bruised.” However much King would seek to construct a unique identity as a pastor, the Gospel he would preach remained rooted in the language and tradition of his father and grandfather.5

  King’s mother, Alberta Williams King, also played a significant role in shaping her eldest son. King described the daughter of Reverend A. D. Williams as one “behind the scene setting forth those motherly cares, the lack of which leaves a missing link in life.” Historian Lewis Baldwin directly connects King’s concern for the poor and his early disdain for capitalism with the influence of his mother. While Daddy King tended to have a more positive view of capitalism as a means for possible racial uplift, King’s mother saw the desperation of the Great Depression as evidence of the tragic flaws of America’s economic system. Young King grew up witnessing long bread lines and other consequences of the “tragic poverty” of his neighborhood. King also observed how socially engaged his father and mother were, which planted in him a passionate concern for social transformation that would mark his public ministry.6

  As the son of a preacher, King’s family extended to Ebenezer Baptist. He joined the church the same day as his older sister, Christine, determined “not to let her get ahead of me.” For King, conversion was much more of a process or journey than the result of some “crisis moment.” Ebenezer exposed him to a vast network of black Baptist preachers from throughout the nation. Some of the most renowned preachers of the day stayed in his home during revivals. Many scholars have mined the influence of the black church tradition on King, including a recent work by Mervyn Warren, who aptly calls the black church King’s “conscious ancestral home, continually feeding and flavoring his religious and educational development as well as his clerical activities.” His religious heritage greatly influenced King’s worldview, preaching, and ministry. Literally hundreds of times a year he observed and participated in the rituals and practices of his church. He listened to countless sermons, learning not only the language of the pulpit, but also how to move and lead a congregation. The lessons King internalized during his formative years at Ebenezer provided the roots for much of what he would endeavor to accomplish as a pastor and civil rights leader. His church would continue to shape King even as he took advantage of a wartime early admission program to matriculate at Morehouse.7

  King began studies at Morehouse in the fall of 1944 at the age of fifteen. According to his own accounts, he entered college as a religious skeptic, more interested in a career in law than in pursuing a life of ministry. Through exposure to religion professor George Kelsey and college president Benjamin Mays, King found models for a socially active and intellectually rigorous ministry. Captivated by their examples and influenced by his roots in his father’s church, King decided to become a preacher. Although he had begun to consider the ministry while in high school, at the time he still grappled with skepticism. While a senior at Morehouse, his urge to enter the ministry “appeared again with an inescapable drive.” King’s later reflections on his call emphasized his desire to serve humanity while minimizing the “miraculous or supernatural.”8

  King’s descriptions of his call to ministry demonstrate his desire to fashion a new kind of pastorate that maintained its roots in the African American tradition. For black Baptists, the story of one’s call to preach was extremely important and tended to have formulaic features. Such narratives typically focused on supernatural and emotional elements that included initial resistance and disobedience to the call, followed by a later decision to fully obey God’s voice by entering the ministry. King’s story included a period of resistance, but the battle was not centered on whether to obey God or not. His struggle was intellectual as he wrestled with personal doubts and ecclesiological shortcomings. King eventually embraced his calling not due to an emotionally charged event or supernatural intervention, but as a rational destination at the end of a rigorous intellectual journey. King credited not only the example of traditional pastors such as his father but also the influence of faculty members at Morehouse with serving as inspirations for the new type of minister he hoped to become. In explaining his decision, King highlighted a “desire to serve God and humanity” and the contention that he could best contribute to society through the pastorate. He sought to couch his ministry service in terms that would be readily applauded by the more rationalistic white liberal church tradition while not completely dismissing the significance of a call to preach. Morehouse College was the place where King began to flesh out the type of ministry he hoped to embody.9

  King benefited significantly from his interaction with Benjamin Mays. In contrast to the Alabama State College president H. Councill Trenholm, Mays was willing to speak publicly against segregation. While King was a student at Morehouse, Mays began writing a weekly column for the Pittsburgh Courier, a nationally syndicated and widely read African American newspaper. Mays later acknowledged that the themes of his newspaper articles often corresponded with his weekly Tuesday morning chapel service sermons. Chapel services were compulsory in the 1940s, and Mays spoke nearly every Tuesday to the entire student body. King’s interaction with Mays extended beyond the chapel, as they developed what Mays later called “a real friendship which was strengthened by visits in his home and by fairly frequent informal chats on the campus and in my office.” These conversations often included analysis of some of the points of Mays’s sermons, occasionally resulting in King’s disagreement with some of Mays’s arguments. Morehouse provided an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity that appealed to young King, leading him to pastor and preach in a fashion that would foster questioning and debate. Perhaps as an attempt to validate his educational pedigree for largely white audiences, King’s later writings often minimized the influence of his time at Morehouse. The limited mention of Mays’s influence in King’s later publications should not minimize the very significant role he played in shaping King’s leadership style and his early homiletic themes. A comparison of Mays’s Pittsburgh Courier articles with King’s early sermons provides firm evidence for what scholars have long suspected: Benjamin Mays had a major impact on the language and themes that became staples of King’s preaching and thought.10

  One of the criticisms King often leveled against the traditional black church was its tendency to deal almost exclusively with spiritual matters while not consistently addressing social challenges. In a Crozer Seminary assignment, King argued that modern preaching must “deal with great social problems,” adding that sermons should help people “adjust to the complexities of modern society.” During Tuesday chapel services, Mays modeled precisely this type of engagement with the great issues of the day. He regularly addressed topics that were pertinent to the black community and thus should be on the minds and hearts of any Morehouse graduate.11

  Mays regularly considered issues of concern to the African American community, including efforts to gain voting rights. In his first article for the Pittsburgh Courier, published in June 1946, Mays hailed a recent victory in an effort to secure the ballot for blacks in Georgia. He also issued a challenge to his readers, calli
ng southern blacks to pay the necessary price required for substantive racial change in the region. While some expected justice to be a given, Mays prescribed long-term commitment and struggle as prerequisites for African Americans’ achievement of full voting rights. Part of Mays’s mission was to develop “Morehouse Men” who would become the vanguard of the new black leadership. Through hard work, discipline, and sacrifice, these emerging leaders would usher in a new day for African Americans. After four years under Mays’s tutelage, King understood that substantive social change would require vigorous effort. This was a lesson Mays wanted every Morehouse graduate to not only understand but embody.12

  Mays combined his admonition for commitment and sacrifice with a broad value-based critique of racist politicians. He was quite willing to chastise reactionary white leaders by name, suggesting that their fight to “keep the Negro a third-rate citizen” was a battle against the ideals of the United States and the teachings of Jesus. Mays’s strategy was to challenge the supposed authority of racist government officials by appealing to a higher law found in the Constitution and the Bible. He consistently appealed to timeless moral principles to suggest that “evil carries within its structure its own self-destruction.” African Americans had embodied such hope in the face of overwhelming oppression since the early days of slavery. The theme was not new, but Mays articulated this hope in educated language, something King would adopt for himself. In numerous school papers and sermons, King emphasized the ultimate death and destruction of evil by articulating a hope-filled faith in the face of violence, unjust laws, and oppressive economic institutions. He even developed a quotation-laden refrain that he used countless times in sermons and speeches to justify hope: “There is something in the universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, ‘No lie can live forever.’ There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant saying, ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ There is something which justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet the scaffold sways the future.’ There is something in the universe that justifies the Biblical writer in saying, ‘You shall reap what you sow.’” True to his religious heritage, King clung to hope even in unfriendly circumstances. Throughout his ministry, King preached a Gospel grounded in an optimistic hope for the ultimate triumph of God in the face of any challenge.13

  Mays’s hope did not prevent him from seeing some of the damage that racism had caused. He mined the psychological implications of discrimination, recognizing that one of the greatest challenges facing blacks was their deeply rooted sense of inadequacy, leading him to call segregation “a badge of inferiority.” He cited the devastating consequences of slavery, segregation, and discrimination to explain the particular challenge to self-esteem that blacks often faced. Like Mays, King also explored the detrimental psychological effects experienced by many African Americans, noting, “it’s so easy for us to feel inferior because we have lived so long amid the tragic midnight of injustice and oppression.” Both Mays and King recognized that feelings of inferiority often led to passivity and fear.14

  Over and over again, Mays challenged his readers to overcome their trepidation, calling fear “the greatest enemy of mankind.” He believed that as long as black southerners were under the influence of fear, they would lack the necessary boldness and resolve to sustain a movement for change. When fear rules, progress becomes stunted, justice is deferred, and equality proves evasive. The courage that is so essential to significant social advancement can easily fall prey to crippling cowardice. King took this message to heart, claiming fear was the root cause of warfare and racism. As Vernon Johns, E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Mary Fair Burks were calling on the people of Montgomery to take courageous stands for justice, Mays emphasized to King and anybody who would listen that fear was one of the greatest enemies that could retard the racial progress society so desperately needed.15

  Following a tradition of racial uplift, Mays prescribed hard work and responsibility in the face of strong and destructive social mores and prejudices. His hope for every Morehouse graduate was that they would cause all of society to take notice of their achievements and diligence. Mays continually preached the importance of doing any job “as if God sent you into the world at this precise moment in history to do this work.” King massaged and crafted this theme into one of his set rhetorical pieces that he repeated regularly in sermons and public speeches. King joined Mays in believing that a strong work ethic could help blacks overcome inferiority and fear, reshape distorted white perceptions, and thus enable them to chart a course of bold action necessary for the challenges ahead. King’s preaching and ministry sought to affirm the God-given dignity of African Americans while also calling on them to live up to high expectations and greater responsibility.16

  In Mays’s view, the battle for civil rights would be waged in the South. He also realized that many of the best and brightest African Americans preferred the more polite racism of the North, Northeast, and West. To counteract this pull, Mays directly challenged all who would listen with his argument that the ultimate commitment to the cause of justice and equality could only be lived out in the South. He went so far as to call southern blacks “the most courageous” on the American scene. Mays believed that circumstances demanded that people of courage live in the South, proving their ability to overcome fear and oppression. Not only did King call for courage in the face of fear, but he also heeded Mays’s challenge to return to the South.17 When King began to ponder where to live and serve following graduate school, perhaps he remembered the challenge of Mays years earlier. Despite the difficulties of being a pastor in the heart of Dixie, King decided to return to the South, setting his life on a trajectory that would place him on the front lines of one of the most significant social movements in human history.18

  Mays saw the leadership and social philosophy of India’s Gandhi as a possible model for the direction in which African Americans should move to secure greater equality in the United States. During King’s junior year at Morehouse, Mays traveled to India, where he met Gandhi. Following the Indian leader’s death in early 1948, Mays wrote an article fondly recalling the ninety minutes they had spent together a year earlier. The primary topic of their discussion had been the use of nonviolence as a method for bringing about social change. Mays credited “the moral and spiritual power of non-violence” as the turning point in the struggle for Indian independence from Great Britain. While not a novel assessment, Mays’s articulation of this belief must have made an impression on young King. When looking for models and examples to hold up before his students at Morehouse, Mays found none more powerful than Gandhi’s independence movement in India.19

  Over his last eighteen months at Morehouse, King was in regular contact with a man who had met with and been inspired by Gandhi. Although King rarely mentioned Gandhi in his early religious writings and sermons, Mays’s enthusiastic articulation of his precepts planted seeds that would fully blossom years later as King entered into the heart of the struggle for civil rights in Montgomery. In one extant assignment submitted for a course at Crozer, King did include a reference to the Indian leader as an example of one whose life demonstrated “the working of the Spirit of God.” While it would be many years before King would intensely study Gandhi’s life and strategies, part of the resonance of the Indian movement with him can be linked to his exposure to Benjamin Mays.20

  Although King may not have adopted nonviolence as a way of life until he found himself on the front lines of the struggle in Montgomery, he did subscribe to the Gandhian belief that the welfare of the oppressor must be taken into account in social struggle. Mays stressed this same theme in his speeches and articles, noting that discrimination “scars not only the soul of the segregated but the soul of the segregator as well.” From his student days onward, King consistently articulated that oppressors have value and are worthy of redemption. His hope was that by appealing to the hearts of these churchgoing, God-w
orshiping southerners, not only would laws be transformed, but the spirits of white southerners would be redeemed. Even in his earliest sermons and religious writings, King already embraced the transforming power of the love ethic found in the teachings and life of Jesus.21

  Years before he arrived in Montgomery, King believed in the redemptive power of love. As his public ministry and civil rights leadership took flight, he articulated a vision of African Americans carrying out a noble mission to both overcome segregation and save the soul of America. Mays had sounded a similar note while King was a student at Morehouse, arguing that the fight for justice and equality is part of “a battle to save the soul of the South and the soul of America.” For King, the ultimate weapon against evil and the best hope for redemption was found in one’s capacity to love. Appealing not only to Gandhi and Mays but also to the words of Jesus, King preached incessantly about the need to love and forgive as “love has within [it] a redemptive power.” King called forgiveness “the Christian weapon of social redemption” and the “Christian weapon against social evil,” believing that it represented “the solution to the race problem.” While King would develop a greater depth of understanding and conviction regarding nonviolence, many of his root convictions regarding the redemptive power of love were established long before he came to Montgomery.22

  King changed and matured during his four years at Morehouse. Many scholars have emphasized the significance of the black Baptist roots in shaping the young King’s preaching and leadership, while others have noted how the white northern academy influenced his thought and convictions. The pivotal importance of Morehouse and Benjamin Mays are often downplayed. This oversight needs to be corrected. Were it not for King’s time at Morehouse and his exposure to a role model like Mays, one may justifiably ask whether King would have entered the ministry at all. During his time at Morehouse, King acquired the academic tools and language to navigate the educational landscape of Crozer Seminary and Boston University. He was able to engage the ideas that formed the curriculum of the white academy. King was prepared to set out on a task of synthesizing the vibrant black church tradition with the language and ideas of white theologians.