Becoming King

by Troy Jackson

  28. Andrews, interview by Durr.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Clifford and Virginia Durr, interview by Lumpkin; Nixon, interview by Lumpkin.

  31. For a thorough description of the founding of both Columbus Avenue Baptist Church (First Baptist Church) and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, see Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 1–23.

  32. Branch, Parting the Waters, 1–5, 107.

  33. Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 23–50.

  34. Vaughn and Wills, eds., Reflections on Our Pastor, 6.

  35. Pierce, interview by Lumpkin.

  36. Ibid. Pierce characterized Johns as a “rough, knock-down, drag-out” type of person who was “a very militant guy.” While Pierce admitted that “Johns pulverized the soil and planted the seed” for the Montgomery movement, he characterized him as “too brusque,” which prevented him from galvanizing the people of Dexter and the broader community. Zelia Evans and J. T. Alexander, in their history of Dexter, add: “One sermon preached during his pastorate was entitled, ‘It’s safe to Murder Negroes in Alabama.’ Its announcement on the bulletin board landed him before a grand jury which tried to prevent him from preaching it. Neither the grand jury nor the Klu [sic] Klux Klan cross that was burned the day of the sermon kept him from delivering his planned discourse” (Evans and Alexander, eds., The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 64).

  37. Pierce, interview by Lumpkin; Lewis and Ligon, interview by Lumpkin; Evans and Alexander, eds., The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 1877–1977, 64. Lewis Baldwin credits Johns for paving the way, noting King’s “success in bringing the Dexter Avenue Church to the forefront of the struggle owed much to the contributions and inspiration of persons who preceded him in Montgomery. One such person was Vernon Johns, the imposing, scholarly, and controversial figure who was King’s immediate predecessor at the Dexter Avenue Church” (Baldwin, There Is a Balm in Gilead, 183).

  38. Gray, interview by Lumpkin. These outside perspectives on Dexter may be a bit simplistic. According to the member Thelma Rice, the congregation “was a mixed church across the board. There were those who were domestics, there were those who were skilled workers, there were those who were in the educational field. There were the professionals, but there was a mixture.” While Rice may be overstating her case, given the small percentage of middle-class blacks in the city, the congregation undoubtedly did include some from the working class (Rice, interview by Lumpkin).

  39. Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 76, 78.

  40. D. Williams, with Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels, 81; Elaine M. Smith, “Living A Womanist Legacy,” in Westhauser, Smith, and Fremlin, eds., Creating Community, 74–75.

  41. While Burks and Jo Ann Robinson claim the organization was founded in 1946 and that Robinson became president in 1950, both dates are incorrect. Burks’s contention that she was inspired by a Vernon Johns sermon eliminates the possibility that the group was founded in 1946, as Johns did not become Dexter’s pastor until 1947. Additionally, in 1953 Mary Fair Burks composed a letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser that she signed, “Mary Fair Burks, President, Negro Women’s Political Council” (Montgomery Advertiser, April 21, 1953). J. Mills Thornton claims the WPC emerged after local black women were excluded from the newly formed Montgomery League of Women Voters, which began in December 1947. When national leaders of the League of Women Voters refused to charter a black chapter in the city, the WPC was born (see Thornton, Dividing Lines, 32, 78, 590n23). While this broader consideration explains the need for an independent organization, Burks’s story fleshes out the specific events that sparked the timing of the WPC, which started closer to 1949 than 1946.

  42. Thelma Glass notes the scope of the organization’s vision: “We had two very strong chapters going, but the whole idea was to have a political council in each area of Montgomery. Four, I think, was in the original plan: east, west, north and south, with its own membership and what not” (Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton, The Children Coming On, 131). Ibid., 229.

  43. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 15–16.

  44. Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 75; Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 22.

  45. Burns, ed., Daybreak of Freedom, 59–61; Thornton, Dividing Lines, 46.

  46. Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton, The Children Coming On, 130, 228–29; Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 28.

  47. Vaughn and Wills, eds., Reflections on Our Pastor, 14–16.

  48. Rice, interview by Lumpkin; Evans and Alexander, eds., The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 1877–1977, 64. See also Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 100–101.

  49. Vaughn and Wills, eds., Reflections on Our Pastor, 6, 45.

  50. Branch, Parting the Waters, 11; Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 105–6.

  51. Montgomery Advertiser, November 11, 1952. The front-page story claimed Reeves confessed to robbing and assaulting Prescott, but he denied raping her, and the chief deputy sheriff, George Mosley, said that medical examiners concluded “the woman definitely was not raped.” Authorities eventually charged Reeves with assaulting six white women over the previous sixteen months. Prescott later claimed that Reeves had tried to rape her. A story by Joe Azbell noted “some 150 Negroes were quizzed by policemen in the 16 month investigation” (Montgomery Advertiser, November 13, 1952). When Reeves took the stand in his trial, he “repudiated six confessions allegedly made to investigating officers” (Montgomery Advertiser, November 29, 1952). The jury reached a guilty verdict in thirty-eight minutes, and Reeves was sentenced to death (Montgomery Advertiser, November 30, 1952; December 4, 5, 1952). Burns, To the Mountaintop, 1.

  52. Vaughn and Wills, eds., Reflections on Our Pastor, 25.

  2. “The Gospel I Will Preach”

  1. King to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952, in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 123–26.

  2. The change of names from Michael to Martin for both father and son appears to have taken place gradually during the mid-1930s. See The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 31; and King Sr., with Riley, Daddy King: An Autobiography, 26. Martin Luther King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 361. Much of the historiography of the past few decades has corrected earlier works that overemphasized the white liberal theological roots of King’s intellectual development. Lewis Baldwin’s There Is a Balm in Gilead highlights the black southern roots of King’s thought: “The black experience and the black Christian tradition were the most important sources in the shaping of King’s life, thought, vision, and efforts to translate the ethical ideal of the beloved community into practical reality” (2). Baldwin notes that previous works, such as Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp’s The Search for the Beloved Community and John Ansbro’s Martin Luther King, Jr., represent “a narrow, elitist, and racist approach that assumes that the black church and the larger black community are not healthy and vital contexts for the origin of intellectual ideas regarding theology and social change. The consequence of that approach has been to abstract King’s intellectual development from his social and religious roots—family, church, and the larger black community—and to treat it primarily as a product of white Western philosophy and theology” (3). Other scholars have made similar arguments regarding the primacy of Atlanta, King’s family, and Ebenezer in King’s development, including Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America; Miller, Voice of Deliverance; Lischer, The Preacher King; and Dyson, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.

  3. For a detailed account of the 1906 riot, see Mixon, The Atlanta Riot. For a thorough study of Atlanta in the 1930s and 1940s, see Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta.

  4. Introduction to vol. 1 of Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 6, 15, 33. For a discussion of Williams’s influen
ce on Martin Luther King Sr., see ibid., 1: 24–28.

  5. Martin Luther King Sr., moderator’s address, Atlanta Missionary Baptist Association, October 17, 1940, as quoted ibid., 1: 34; King Jr., “Acceptance Address at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,” May 2, 1954, ibid., 6: 154–57. While King referred to his father’s church as part of the “fundamentalist line,” Daddy King’s faith was more nuanced than rigid (King Jr., “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” November 22, 1950, ibid., 1: 361). Although Daddy King’s theological views on salvation, Scripture, and the nature of Jesus were more conservative, these did not lead to division with those holding more modern views on God, the Bible, and theology. Despite King Jr.’s more liberal theological leanings, his father heartily supported his ordination to the ministry. Keith Miller helpfully notes: “What separates white fundamentalists from liberal white Protestants is the issue of the literal truth of scripture. But, despite the clash between J. H. Jackson and Gardner Taylor, black Protestants have never found the issue of Biblical literalism to be paramount or divisive. In fact, Biblical literalism is essentially a non-issue among black Protestants. Throughout his public career King never publicly stated whether he believed the Bible to be literally true. Nor in hundreds of interviews and press conferences was he ever asked to do so. The entire question did not matter to him, his followers, or other blacks” (Miller, Voice of Deliverance, 222–23n56). Although Miller’s analysis is a bit simplistic, his framework is helpful for understanding the cohesion of black pastors around social issues even though they differed theologically.

  6. King Jr., “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” November 22, 1950, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 359–60: “I was much too young to remember the beginning of this depression, but I do recall how I questioned my parent about the numerous people standing in bread lines when I was about five years of age. I can see the effects of this early childhood experience on my present anti capitalistic feelings.” See also King Jr., Stride toward Freedom, 90; and Baldwin, There Is a Balm in Gilead, 122. Baldwin demonstrates the influence of the plight of the poor and working class on King in his analysis of King’s summer jobs: “The fact that he chose the work of a common laborer is indeed remarkable, especially since, being the son of a prominent pastor and civic leader, he could have easily gotten less demanding jobs” (27).

  7. King Jr., “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” November 22, 1950, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 361; Warren, King Came Preaching, 15. Most of the recent scholarship on King has made this point as well, including Baldwin’s There Is a Balm in Gilead, Lischer’s Preacher King, and Cone’s Malcolm and Martin and America. Lischer also elevates the significance of the African American preaching tradition, noting King “learned more from the Negro preacher’s methods of sustaining a people and readying it for action than from any of his courses in graduate school; he absorbed more from his own church’s identification with the Suffering Servant than from anything he read in Gandhi. What came earliest to him remained the longest and enabled him to put a distinctively Christian seal on the struggle for civil rights in the United States” (Lischer, The Preacher King, 6). Lischer also emphasizes that King experienced the potential transforming power of God’s Word from his childhood at Ebenezer: “He believed that the preached Word performs a sustaining function for all who are oppressed and a corrective function for all who know the truth but lead disordered lives. He also believed that the Word of God possesses the power to change hearts of stone. This was not an abstract theology but an empirical experience. He had seen it happen in his father’s church.” Lischer specifically cites William Holmes Borders, Sandy Ray, and Gardner Taylor, three learned and influential black preachers of the day, and family friends all, as having an influence on young King (48). Borders was also a rival of Daddy King, as his Wheat Street Baptist Church sat a mere block west of Ebenezer on Auburn Avenue. As a teen, King would often sneak out of Ebenezer so he could slip into the balcony at Wheat Street to catch Borders’s Sunday morning sermon.

  8. King Jr., “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” November 22, 1950, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 263.

  9. King Jr., “My Call to the Ministry,” August 7, 1959, ibid., 6: 367–68.

  10. Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894–1984) served as the dean of Howard University’s School of Religion from 1934 to 1940, at which time he became the president of Morehouse College, a position he held until 1967. Mays received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and was the author of several books, including The Negro’s God (1938). For more on Mays, see his autobiography, Born to Rebel, esp. 191, 265; and Carter, ed., Walking Integrity, xi. Years later, in his essay “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” King downplayed the influence of Morehouse, reducing the school’s influence on his adoption of nonviolence to his exposure to Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. Throughout, King stressed the influence of predominantly white theologians, philosophers, and social thinkers, while downplaying many of the significant African American influences on his life and thought, including Mays (King Jr., Stride toward Freedom, 90–107). King sought input from George Kelsey, Stanley Levison, and Bayard Rustin in composing the essay (see King to Kelsey, March 31, 1958; Kelsey to King, April 4, 1958, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 4: 391–92, 394–95; and Levison to King, April 1, 1958, Box 29A, King Papers, Boston University).

  11. King Jr., “Preaching Ministry,” November 24, 1948, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. 6: 69–77.

  12. Pittsburgh Courier, June 15, 1946. In a later article, Mays made a similar case for the type of commitment necessary to experience liberty: “Freedom is an achievement and not a gift. Whether it is freedom from external circumstances or freedom from an internally cramped spirit or soul, it must be achieved. It is seldom, if ever, given freely and it is never inwardly achieved without struggle and years of discipline. This is true of nations. It is true of races and it is equally true of individuals” (Mays, “Nehru,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 7, 1946).

  13. Mays, “Signs of Hope,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 29, 1946; Mays, “Justice for All,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 22, 1947. In a later article, Mays sounded a similar note: “The faith of faiths is the deep-seated conviction that wrong cannot ultimately triumph over right, that that which is essentially evil will not survive, and that the universe itself sustains the good and fights on the side of right. If this is not so, there is little to hope for in this life” (Mays, “Ray of Hope,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 17, 1948). King Jr., “Will Capitalism Survive?” February 15, 1950, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 104–5; “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” July 24, 1955, Folder 110, Sermon File; King Jr., “Going Forward by Going Backward,” April 4, 1954, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 159–63. These quotes closely correspond to a selection from Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon “Why We Believe in a Good God,” found in his book On Being Fit to Live With: Sermons on Post-war Christianity. While King’s language more closely corresponds to Fosdick’s, King’s attraction to these quotes was undoubtedly influenced by his exposure to the moral underpinnings that informed the chapel sermons of Mays.

  14. Mays, “Law Is Weapon,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 10, 1946; Mays, “Inferiority among Negroes,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 10, 1947; King Jr., “Overcoming an Inferiority Complex,” July 14, 1957, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 303–16.

  15. Mays, “Man’s Greatest Enemy,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 8, 1947; King Jr., “Mastering Our Fears,” July 21, 1957, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 319–21.

  16. Mays, “Advice to Graduates,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 7, 1947.

  17. King Jr., “Transformed Nonconformist,” November 1954, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 195–98.

  18. Mays, “Two Fears,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 20, 1946.

  19. Mays, “Non-Violence,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 28, 1948. Mays met Gandhi on December 31, 1946, while visiting India. Mays’s article
highlighted the courage, faith, and forgiveness Gandhian nonviolence demonstrates: “The nonviolent man must be absolutely fearless…. Non-violence is the essence of faith. He knows the method of non-violence will win. Nothing else can. This one can readily see, is faith in the moral and spiritual nature of the universe.” Finally Mays noted: “He died practicing what he preached. The press said that when falling he gave a sign which meant ‘forgive’” (Mays, “Power of Spirit,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 21, 1946).

  20. King Jr., “Six Talks in Outline,” November 23, 1949, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 249. In his essay “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” King credits a lecture by the Howard University president Mordecai Johnson as the launching point for his exploration of Gandhi. Delivered while King was attending Crozer, Johnson’s words may have served as a catalyst for King, not because they were new, but rather because they resonated with a message he had heard years earlier while a student at Morehouse (King Jr., Stride toward Freedom, 96).

  21. Mays, “The Church amidst Ethnic and Racial Tensions,” speech delivered at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., August 1954, transcribed as appendix B in Mays, Born to Rebel, 354.

  22. Mays, “Another Victory,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1948; King Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” August 31, 1952, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 126–28; King Jr., “Meaning of Forgiveness,” ibid., 6: 580–81.

  23. W. Thomas McGann, “Statement on Behalf of Ernest Nichols, State of New Jersey vs. Ernest Nichols,” July 1950, in King Jr., Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 327–29; King Jr., introduction to vol. 1 of Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1: 53.

  24. For more on personalism, see Deats and Robb, eds., The Boston Personalist Tradition in Philosophy, Social Ethics, and Theology; and Borrow, Personalism: A Critical Introduction. Keith Miller, in assessing King’s affinity for personalism, argues King “appreciated Personalist ideas because they were reassuringly familiar. His gravitation to Personalism is unsurprising inasmuch as the Personalists emphasized the same fatherly, personal God he heard praised in every sermon, hymn, and prayer offered at Ebenezer Church during his childhood and adolescence” (Miller, Voice of Deliverance, 62). Lewis Baldwin echoes Miller, noting King’s “conviction about the reality of the personal God was cultivated by the black church and black religion long before he entered a seminary and a university” (Baldwin, There Is a Balm in Gilead, 170).