The Seminarian
Page 13
Another reckoning lay ahead for the young couple. As ML’s middle year drew to a close and Betty prepared to graduate from the Moore College of Art, Crozer announced that the seminary would be adding two new professors to the staff.7 One of them was a young man who knew Betty very well: Kenneth Smith, her first serious boyfriend. Starting in the fall of 1950, Smith, the new and single Applied Christianity professor, would take up residence on the second floor of Old Main—only a few doors away from ML’s room 52.
Classes and Professors: Historical Perspectives
Outline History of Christianity
“The religious man has generally been motivated by his desire to win the larger wellbeing of his group, which may include mankind. . . . The greatest evils that beset and baffle him are those which come through the medium of human relationships.”
—R. E. E. Harkness8
ML’s Class Schedule
Year II, Term 3, February 21–May 5, 1950
Time
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
8:00 AM
Outline History of Christianity
Outline History of Christianity
Outline History of Christianity
Outline History of Christianity
9:00 AM
10:00 AM
10:30 AM
Chapel service
Optional service
Devotional pd.
Hist. of Living Rels. 101
Hist. of Living Rels. 101
Hist. of Living Rels. 101
Hist. of Living Rels. 101
11:00 AM
11:30 AM
12:00 PM
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
3:00 PM
4:00 PM
Vespers service (4:15 PM)
5:00 PM
No classes on Monday | Term examinations: May 2–5 |
Eighty-second commencement: May 7–9
ML’s GPA for the term: 3.33
Outline History of Christianity
Reuben Elmore Ernest Harkness, MA, BD, PhD (Chicago)
Course Description: “The rise and development of Christianity to the Renaissance: the Mediterranean world of the early Christian era; reasons for, and types of, persecution; Christianity’s defense and its final acceptance by the State; growth of the Imperial Church. Rise of Nationalism and the Reformation: the particular course of the new movement in each nation; the escape of reform forces from England to America; the development of an American Christianity.” (Credit hours: 8; ML’s grade: B+)
The History of Living Religions 101
George Washington Davis, BD, ThM (Colgate-Rochester), PhD (Yale)
Course Description: “A survey of five of mankind’s living religions; the religion of primitive peoples; detailed study of the origins, founders, doctrines, and expressional forms of those religions which have had their origins in India—namely, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.” (Credit hours: 4; ML’s grade: B+)
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, a half-hour period was set aside at 10:00 AM for services in the chapel. On Tuesdays was a mandatory service led by interim president Dr. Howard Wayne Smith and/or his soon-to-be-installed replacement, Sankey L. Blanton. Wednesday services were optional, generally led by a member of the faculty or an invited pastor from an evangelical institution. The Friday devotional period was run by the students themselves and presided over by ML as chairman of the Devotions Committee. On Thursday, the 10:00 AM slot was a free period, and a vespers service was held at 4:15 PM. This tightly planned service featured a speaker from a prescheduled list, usually a Crozer professor or a guest speaker from another institution.9
With a voice for radio and a skill for illuminating the seemingly mundane details of history, R. E. E. Harkness had stood as one of the pillars of the Crozer faculty for twenty-three years. By the time ML walked into his Outline History of Christianity class, the beloved professor was both the school’s J. P. Crozer Griffith Professor of Church History and president of the American Baptist Historical Society. In short, he was a walking library. If you needed to learn how the Quakers and Baptists of the eighteenth century were connected, you went to Harkness. If you queried Harkness about Roger Williams, the Puritan renegade who founded Providence, Rhode Island, there was a good chance your afternoon would be shot.10
ML was fortunate not to have missed his opportunity to study with Harkness, as the professor would retire from Crozer in the spring of 1950. Unfortunately, there is little record of the classroom interactions between the two, and neither man spoke of the other in their later years. “I don’t understand that,” said a Crozer student turned professor who had also taken a church history course from Harkness.11 Still, it’s clear from the course description that Harkness offered ML and the other students a wide-ranging survey of Christianity’s history, with a particular focus on its development in Western Europe and early America—Harkness’s specialty. If his frequent journal articles are any indication, he was capable of conveying both enthusiasm and clarity even when describing mysticism during the English Reformation.
Harkness’s articles also frequently describe an urgent need for broadened religious consciousness. He would have wanted ML and his classmates to expand their knowledge of Christianity in other times and other places as much as they could, seeing it as the key to understanding Christianity in the here and now:
Perhaps the most essential requirement is that religion should know itself. For any religious leader we might paraphrase the old adage: “He knows not England who only England knows.”12
ML could take pride in knowing that he had taken steps to achieve this broadened perspective outside of class as well. He’d left the South, for one. He’d preached in churches in the North, and he’d taken it upon himself to explore social movements on the other side of the world. He knows not the South who only the South knows. When King returned home, he would see the region in a clearer light.
The History of Living Religions 101
Delving further into the unfamiliar expanse of religious history, ML investigated the major religions of the world with George W. Davis. Clear-eyed and open-minded as ever, Davis was an ideal professor to introduce students to the basic histories of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam, and how they intermingled with or ran parallel to Christianity.
In a standout essay ML completed for the class, he contrasted two branches of Buddhism: the more liberal, populist Mahayana branch and the strictly monastic Hinayana branch. A close reading of this paper shows ML working extremely hard to grasp the subtleties of each side, quoting heavily (and at times misappropriating) from his sources. Among the clamor of pasted citations, however, are whispers of his own thoughts. After describing how the Mahayana viewed an aspect of Hinayana as “selfish” and “narrow,” ML mentions how the Mahayana created a far more “unselfish” ideal—the notion that as long as believers commit themselves to lives of nonjudgmental empathy, devoted to the service of others, they can attain enlightenment. He adds:
It is interesting . . . to note the similarities of this [Mahayana] conception of vicarious suffering and the transference of merit to many of the theories of atonement that have appeared in the history of Christian thought.13
ML, through one of his sources, also begins to connect the core philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism with the ideals described in seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics—the idea of “One Reality” and the desire to see the world with as few delusions as possible.
By finding connections among the world’s religions, ML was once again broadening his perspective, seeking truth outside his comfort zone. Davis’s class was his first direct attempt to understand the world as a unified religious community—a worldview that would be reflected seventeen years later in one of ML’s most controversial speeches, “Beyond Vietnam.” Delivered in April 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, this rhetorical storm of anger at the US military’s actions in Vi
etnam included a plea for Americans to conceptualize a “worldwide fellowship” and an “unconditional love for all of mankind”:
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. . . . I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.14
Twenty-one-year-old ML could not have imagined the global developments and personal experiences that would lead him to deliver such a plea to a skeptical nation more than a decade hence. But as he continued his Crozer education, the young man was shaping his own philosophy in small but nuanced ways. Classes such as Living Religions were necessary steps toward a future he could not yet see, but was beginning to feel.
Student Body President, NAACP Speaker: “Head and Shoulders Above Anybody Else”
As he stretched his philosophical boundaries and went on dates with Betty, ML was emerging from the shadow of the life that still waited for him down in Atlanta. His role back home was simple and unchanging: be the perfect oldest son who carries on his father’s legacy at Ebenezer Baptist, and try to be happy with it. Perhaps in the distant future he would be, but for now it was his life at Crozer that made him happy, and as he allowed his experiences there to enrich him, other students took notice.
Chairing the Devotions Committee provided a particularly good opportunity for him to grab a moment in the spotlight. In order to effectively plan each Friday’s student-run devotional period, ML would have had to collaborate with any student who hoped to speak at or otherwise participate in the service, and accommodate everyone in the student body who wished to attend. Each week’s service was a testament to his leadership, his ability to connect with fellow seminarians from every background—black, white, and international students alike. Even many first-year students already knew and admired ML, including ex-GI Francis Stewart and vegetarian pacifist Walter Stark, thanks not only to his obvious leadership and preaching skills but also to his lighthearted dorm-room banter.
Thus, it is no surprise that ML was a strong contender for student body president in the spring of 1950. Voting concluded in mid-April, and after a faculty committee and the student government association made their own recommendations, the winner was announced: Martin Luther King Jr.15
“It was not all that big of a deal,” said Horace Whitaker of ML’s victory; the main benefit of winning was simply that you got to say you were the president. It did, however, make Crozer history: King was the first black student body president in the seminary’s eighty-two years of existence. And the time had certainly come for such a milestone, since seven of the fourteen students in ML’s middle-year class were African American. Said Marcus Wood, it “was indeed an honor to us . . . black students to have one of us be the president of the student body.”16
But Francis Stewart, who would be elected student body president the following year, denied that the students picked ML to make some kind of racial statement. According to Stewart, King was chosen simply because he “was head and shoulders above anybody else. . . . He was a good speaker, a good scholar; he was . . . well liked.”17 In any event, his election was another sign of how much respect most everyone had for ML, and how far he’d come since the days when he tangled with an angry Lucius Hall and took pains not to draw attention to himself in class.
ML’s new sense of confidence extended to his preaching. He knew he could preach, thanks to his upbringing at Ebenezer and the tutelage of Rev. Barbour, and he felt entitled to judge the way other seminarians sermonized. As the nearly thirty-year-old Walter Stark recalled, “Martin especially told me, ‘You don’t know how to preach.’ [Martin would] talk about preaching up a storm, and all that kind of thing. He said, ‘You white fellas, you don’t know how to preach!’”18
ML continued to find work in the pulpits of local churches. For instance, on Sunday, March 5, he had traveled two miles off campus to Fifth Presbyterian Church,*1 where he spoke at an 8:00 PM service commemorating “Men’s Day.”19 Marcus Wood recalled, with a tinge of envy, how ML’s packed preaching schedule reflected the continued influence of Daddy King. His young friend “would frequently go out on the weekend and preach at area churches, because his father—known throughout Baptist circles—would say to his friends, many of whom were pastors: ‘My son is at Crozer; I want you to hear him.’” Although such engagements were more for the continued practice than anything else, the older and more experienced Wood couldn’t help but notice the monetary benefit of his friend’s packed schedule: “In those days . . . people gave nickels and dimes in church, along with a few quarters. And King would always come back on Sunday or Monday with a lot of change in his pocket.”20
But even when it came to speaking engagements, ML wasn’t content simply to walk through the doors his father opened for him. He was also making his own arrangements, outside the familiar church setting in which Daddy King held so much sway. On May 5, 1950, the last day of final exams, he traveled fifteen miles southeast to Newark, Delaware, to give a speech in front of the local chapter of the NAACP.
King was there at the invitation of a fellow classmate, a married preacher named George T. Walton. Although Walton was white, he was the president of the Newark NAACP chapter, and he asked ML to provide his perspective on race relations in the United States. ML did belong to the Morehouse chapter of the NAACP during his years as a student there, but this is the first reported instance of ML speaking at an NAACP event in the North.
The meeting was held at the New London Avenue Colored School—as of 1950, Delaware’s schools were still segregated.*2 Mainly a school for local black children in the first through eighth grades, the building was tiny. ML would have had to deliver his speech in one of four common first-floor classrooms or a basement cafeteria to an audience that, Rev. Walton hoped, would be interracial enough to foster a healthy discussion.
During the meeting, the organizers also played a sixteen-minute animated film titled Picture in Your Mind.21 Created by Philip Stapp in 1948 after a trip to war-ravaged France, the film paints a haunting portrait of what the world could become if it continued down the path of racial prejudice. As ML sat near the projector, the narrator described the evolution of man and civilization: “From hunger and loneliness, man banded together . . . to live and work in natural isolation.” Over time, these bands of men inevitably split into separate tribes, and when times were tough, those who were suffering assigned blame in a familiar way:
Within these groups there were other groups, other tensions seeking an outlet. Jealousy, anger, guilt . . . and there was the other tribe across the river, across the hilltop, across the sea, who had different colored skin, ate forbidden food, worshipped other Gods . . . distant, strange. Heard only through the distorted ear of rumor . . . No amount of education will ever help them. Our way is the right way.22
Later in the film, the animation depicts a man standing just in front of a tree, then slowly reveals that beneath the tree, trapped within its roots, is a far wilder man—a demon, one could say. Where the wild man touches the roots, red tendrils begin to spread, creeping up and out of the ground, grabbing the first man around the legs . . .
Our need to live together, our civilization, our education, have buried in our memory ancient primal impulses . . . but they are not dead. Unexposed, uncontrolled . . . they will control us. These are the hidden roots of prejudice. . . . In time of need they can be turned against us . . .
History does not record ML’s reaction to this unusual presentation, but he would surely have agreed with its overall message: hu
manity, despite our so-called differences, must learn to live together, and not by having “one way of life imposed upon us.” Perhaps he would also have admired Stapp for finding an innovative way to convey this message of tolerance, since he himself was seeking new ways to speak to the public about social concerns.
If ML wanted to set himself apart from his father, he would need to prove that he could connect with people outside the familiar setting of a church. So here he was at a Newark NAACP event, holding forth on his chosen, secular topic, which according to the local newspaper was to contrast “popular misconceptions regarding goals of Negroes with what he considers the real objectives.”23
It was another instance of ML breaking out of his comfort zone in a year that had already been filled with them. His life was beginning to speed up, and the summer of 1950 would be one to remember.
Interlude
The Summer of 1950
“The first civil rights struggle that King had ever been in was with me. It was in Maple Shade, New Jersey, in 1950.”
—Walter McCall1
ON MAY 28, 1950, ML stood behind the Ebenezer pulpit in Atlanta, preaching the “Three Levels of Fellowship” to the congregation—many of whom, according to ML’s close childhood friend Larry Williams, didn’t really enjoy this twenty-one-year-old know-it-all telling them how to best live life. They’d grown used to the passionate growl of ML’s more experienced father. Closing in on his divinity degree, the younger King could very easily come off as a bit of a snob—a grating reminder for parishioners of the education they themselves had not pursued.2