The Seminarian

by Patrick Parr

  Worse for ML than facing an ambivalent congregation was returning to his childhood home to face the judgment of Daddy King. According to another Atlanta friend, June Dobbs, ML’s father had given him the third degree about his academic performance at Crozer. He hadn’t earned a grade lower than a B since the end of his first year, but that wasn’t enough. “I remember his father saying, ‘You ought to be making all As. I pay all your bills,’ Dobbs recalls. “He wanted him to be perfect, a scholar and this, that, and the other.”3

  Martin Luther King Sr. also recoiled at his son’s evolving political opinions. ML “often seemed to be drifting away from the basics of capitalism and Western democracy that I felt very strongly about,” he wrote years later. Daddy King listened patiently to his son, absorbing as much as he could until a line was crossed. “There were some sharp exchanges; I may even have raised my voice a few times.”4

  Daddy King was more impressed with ML’s performance behind the pulpit. As each Sunday passed, he could see his son improve as a preacher, starting to seamlessly combine the “Bible’s truths with wisdom of the modern world.” For the plainspoken southern Bible-thumper who’d graduated from Morehouse in 1930 and never traveled north to continue his studies, his son provided a glimpse of what could have been: “There was a deeper, considerably more resonant quality in his preaching, and on the Sundays he relieved me in the pulpit, I grew increasingly more moved by his growth, the probing quality of his mind, the urgency, the fire that makes for brilliance in every theological setting.”5

  But the elder King also feared that his son, having spent so much time in the North, would not return to Atlanta permanently. “Many of the young went north to school and never came back,” he wrote. “This was a loss that hurt the South, perhaps for longer than anyone knows.”6 So he did his best to keep ML rooted to Ebenezer and to Atlanta. Perhaps in pursuit of that goal, ML’s father urged him to consider pursuing a serious relationship with his sister’s friend Juanita Sellers, whom he’d dated on and off in Atlanta and seen while visiting Christine in New York. Daddy King had no way of knowing that things were already getting serious between his son and Betty Moitz.

  Perhaps needing a break from his father’s constant scrutiny, ML briefly stepped away from the Ebenezer pulpit and traveled back up north to see Mac, who was staying with relatives at 753 Walnut Street, a brick duplex in Camden, New Jersey. ML knew his trip would be a short one; he had to be back in Atlanta for his brother’s wedding. AD was marrying his fiancée, Naomi Barber, on June 15.

  753 Walnut Street in Camden, New Jersey, where ML and Walter McCall stayed on and off in the summer of 1950. Courtesy of Patrick Duff, Camden, NJ

  The previous Sunday, June 11, ML and Mac attended an evening church service, along with Mac’s girlfriend, Pearl Smith, and her roommate, Doris Wilson. Afterward, the four wanted to go out for a drink to unwind. They decided to try Mary’s Café, a tavern in nearby Maple Shade, New Jersey. According to Pearl Smith’s later testimony, she, Doris, and ML took a seat at a table in the taproom. Meanwhile, McCall strode up to the counter, where the tavern’s owner, a fifty-four-year-old German immigrant named Ernest Nichols, was tending bar.7

  It was after midnight by this point, and the tavern was mostly empty. ML and company were still in church attire. Mary’s Café was not exactly the kind of place one went while decked out in one’s Sunday best; Nichols was used to having patrons who were more blue-collar, especially at night.8

  Mac asked Nichols for a couple “quarts of beer . . . and four glasses.” Nichols stared at his customer in disbelief. The bartender said to McCall that he couldn’t serve them alcohol “because it was Sunday.”

  Mac headed back to the table, confused. Probably at a lower volume, he asked ML and the two young ladies if that was indeed the law. Mac, recalled Pearl Smith, wondered whether Nichols “was refusing to serve us because it was Sunday and a bottled beer was considered package goods.” Someone suggested that Mac go ask for four glasses of beer instead.

  So McCall went back up to Nichols, who no doubt had been watching the four discuss the situation. When Mac asked for glasses of beer, his irritation grew. According to a later statement submitted to the authorities on his behalf, serving beer of any kind at this time of night would have been a violation, and from his perspective, these four were testing him—conspiring to screw him over in some way.9

  Perhaps McCall could see the annoyed intensity in Nichols, because then Mac shrugged off his previous request and asked for four ginger ales. Surely that would be OK.

  But Nichols had already become unhinged. A hidden agenda was being played, somehow, and he refused to take part. He left the bar and stormed outside. Moments passed as Nichols went to his apartment a short distance away. ML, McCall, and the two ladies didn’t know what was happening. Then Nichols came back in with a revolver and stood by the door. From Pearl Smith’s sworn statement, Nichols “opened the front door and shot out the door and he came back in the tavern and was waving the gun around and using very abusive language.”10

  ML and the others ran out of the tavern. As they did, according to a few reports, Nichols shouted, “I’ll kill for less!” The group climbed into McCall’s car and sped away.11

  They decided to head to the Maple Shade police department to file a complaint. According to Pearl Smith, herself an officer of the law, “We got the police and came back down [to Mary’s Café] and the police confiscated the gun.”12

  The incident in Maple Shade was still on ML’s mind later in the week, when he went to visit Rev. Barbour in Chester and found Almanina Barbour at home. At the time, Rev. Barbour’s daughter was a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, so when ML told her what happened, it could have been a case ripped from one of her textbooks. Vividly, Almanina remembered that ML “was furious—livid. I said, ‘You don’t have to take this lying down.’ I advised him to sue.”13

  ML and his friends decided to pursue charges against Nichols, not only for threatening them with a gun but also for racial discrimination. The latter was illegal under New Jersey’s antidiscrimination law, one of the first in the nation, which had been passed just five years earlier.

  But first up was Nichols’s hearing on the weapons charge, which conflicted with the date of AD King’s nuptials. This meant that if ML was to testify, he needed to persuade his brother to postpone the wedding.

  ML called Mama King in Atlanta around 9:30 AM on the scheduled day of the ceremony and explained the situation. According to AD, ML told his mother that “his suit against the restaurant was coming up the next day,” and ML “wanted to know if I couldn’t put the wedding off for two more days.” AD was still in bed, but his mother passed along the message. At first, AD was annoyed, since he’d “been waiting for the big day for seven years,” but he wanted his brother there by his side as best man. After a few moments of head-shaking, AD obliged, pushing back the service by two days. “I will never forgive him . . .” AD jokingly said. “I was mad as the devil.”14

  But ML’s attendance at the hearing was good news for the Maple Shade solicitor who prosecuted the case. “He was a very good witness,” the lawyer recalled. “He was direct and positive with his answers. You had the feeling he was telling the truth.” Mac also credited the assistance of Robert Burke Johnson, a friend of his who was president of a local NAACP chapter.15 And, of course, Mac’s magnanimity shouldn’t obscure his own crucial role; had he not insisted, with his typical fearlessness, on confronting Nichols in the first place, they wouldn’t have had their day in court.*1

  Thanks to everyone’s persistence, and AD’s reluctant sacrifice, the judge found Nichols guilty on the firearms violations and fined him fifty dollars. A hearing on the discrimination charges would have to wait until later in the summer. In the meantime, ML had a wedding to get to.

  Right after his courtroom appearance, ML set out on the thirteen-hour drive south. With him were his sister, Christine, who had mainly stayed up north for the summer, and their Atlanta f
riend “Deacon” Jethro English, a loyal Ebenezer parishioner since 1925 who had been visiting family in the New Jersey area. “ML and I almost missed Naomi and A.D.’s wedding completely,” said Christine. “We were traveling by car with ML at the wheel.”16

  Perhaps it was the intensity of the last few days in Maple Shade or the rush of their initial legal victory, or perhaps ML was simply worried about missing the most important day of his brother’s life, but he decided to ignore the speed limit. “Truth be told,” Christine said, “ML was known for driving with a lead foot.”

  They’d just started heading south when they heard sirens behind them. ML pulled over. “We were given a ticket and had to follow the officer to either the jail or the courthouse. I don’t remember which. ML rode in the back of the police car, Deacon English drove the car ML had been driving, and I was left as [Jethro’s] worried front-seat passenger.”

  And so, for the second time in less than a week, ML found himself surrounded by law enforcement, only this time he was the guilty party. As the three stood near a counter, the clerk told them the fine for speeding was $25—around $250 in today’s currency. “When we heard the amount of the fine,” said Christine, “we could have fainted!” More than a half-century after the incident, Christine could still remember ML’s exact reaction to hearing the amount. “ML had a look on his face that was priceless as he glanced from me to Deacon English, and back again . . . poor ML didn’t have a penny to his name.”

  Among the three of them, they scrounged through what they had on them, hoping to dig up the required amount. If they couldn’t, then AD’s wedding would be missing two family members. Fortunately, Christine had just enough, and they were granted the “freedom . . . to hightail it to the wedding.”17

  ML and Christine did make it back in time for the ceremony, which took place, as Christine recalled, “at Naomi’s parents’ home on McDaniel Street in Atlanta.” The next day was Sunday, and ML managed to throw together a sermon at Ebenezer, titled “The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth.”18

  His week had started with gunshots and hate, followed by two visits to the authorities and a court hearing, and it ended with a last-minute entrance to his younger brother’s wedding. ML had squeezed a few months’ worth of experience into one jam-packed week.

  Back in New Jersey, preparations continued for a grand jury hearing in the Maple Shade discrimination case. The Camden NAACP entered the fray to support what they saw as an obvious race-driven violation. But to secure more evidence that Ernest Nichols had refused to serve ML and company because they were black, Almanina Barbour asked three of her white classmates from the University of Pennsylvania Law School to visit Mary’s Café and pose as thirsty customers. Sure enough, they had no problems getting a drink, and were prepared to confirm that fact to the grand jury.19

  Unfortunately, Almanina’s classmates soon had second thoughts. As Walter McCall remembered, “The young white boys who . . . were to testify against the owner discovered that their parents had brought pressure against them and they couldn’t appear.” Explained Almanina, “They felt testifying would hurt their careers.” She then divulged the fact that “all three” became “big attorneys in the city . . . but I won’t mention their names.”20

  Their corroborating evidence would have been missed, but according to Nichols’s attorney, W. Thomas McGann, the case suffered a more damaging blow when ML failed to return to New Jersey to testify. “Rev. King and his friends,” wrote McGann, “never appeared before the grand jury, even though they were notified and asked to be available as witnesses.” According to the lawyer, Walter McCall was the only one of the four complainants who made it to the hearing, but his presence alone wasn’t enough. The judge dismissed the case.21

  We can only speculate as to why ML bowed out. He may have seen the loss of Almanina’s witnesses as an unrecoverable setback. (Mac would later suggest as much, recalling that “as a result” of the witnesses refusing to appear, “we just dropped the thing.”)22 On the other hand, he may have simply thought himself too busy with other responsibilities to head back north. Not only did he have his associate pastor duties at Ebenezer Baptist, but he had apparently rededicated himself to doing fieldwork for a sociology professor he’d met while studying at Morehouse, Professor Ira Reid. An Atlanta News column that ran in the Pittsburgh Courier on July 15, 1950, included the following blurb:

  Miss June Dobbs and the Rev. M. L. King Jr., who are working on the survey of the Negro Baptists of America, under Ira D.A. Reid, are in attendance at the Baptist Institute which is in session at Morehouse College.23

  Ira De Augustine Reid was a professor at Atlanta University from whom ML had taken a few sociology seminars as a college student. Reid then moved to Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he became the school’s first tenured black professor. In the summer of 1948, right after ML graduated from Morehouse, the professor reached out to him, his friend June Dobbs, and other students for help with a mammoth project: collecting comprehensive data on black Baptist churches and seminaries across the United States. To do this, he would need young men and women to sacrifice days and weekends to interview Baptist ministers in different areas of the country. It was a perfect gig for a student—flexible schedule, cultural experience, and a little extra cash—and ML continued to work for the project during his time at Crozer, pounding the pavement in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and even St. Louis. At this stage in life, perhaps this took precedence over attending a grand jury hearing in New Jersey.

  One also imagines that if ML had prioritized the Maple Shade proceedings, they would have made a lasting impression on those close to him—in particular, the brother who’d held off on getting married so he could pursue it. But AD didn’t seem to retain much knowledge of the case. Asked about it in 1957, he remembered a few of the basic details but thought it had taken place in Philadelphia. “I never asked him how the suit came out,” AD said, “and I don’t know to this day whether he won or lost.”24

  But it would be wrong to dismiss the importance of the events in Maple Shade just because they ultimately petered out. For the first time in his life, ML had been directly involved in a civil rights case. He helped file a suit, testified in court, and witnessed the impact an outside advocacy group, the NAACP, could have on the outcome. Eleven years later, in a Philadelphia Tribune article, ML himself would make the connection between the incident and his later work, describing it as something akin to the organized protests of the civil rights movement: “They refused to serve us. It was a painful experience because we decided to sit-in.”25

  And in the immediate aftermath of Maple Shade, ML’s preaching does seem to have focused more strongly on social action and combating the ills of the establishment. Where at the beginning of the summer he’d discussed the “Three Levels of Fellowship,” by July 2 he was speaking of the importance of “Propagandizing Christianity,” urging the Ebenezer congregation to spread the word of the Lord and assuring them that not all propaganda should be considered corrupt. Subsequent sermons are lost to history, but some of their titles, such as “Having the Moral Courage to Speak Out” (July 23) and “The Conquest of Fear” (August 20) suggest the lingering influence of ML’s eventful week in June.26

  Year III

  Revelation

  A vespers service in the Crozer chapel, circa the late 1940s. The chapel, located on the first floor of Old Main, is where ML and other seminarians had various classes and worshipped throughout the week. Courtesy of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, NY

  7

  Forbidden Love

  Term 1, September 12–

  November 22, 1950

  “Martin talked slowly, delivering every sentence with Delphian assurance and oracular finality. . . . That afternoon, in the middle of the day and the middle of the week, he wore a collar, tie, and three-button suit. He was a small-framed person, who walked and talked slowly with a kind of Napoleonic assurance. He looked like a major event about to happen.”

&nbs
p; —Dr. Samuel Proctor, former Crozer and Boston University graduate,

  upon meeting ML for the first time1

  In Love but Struggling: “Man of a Broken Heart”

  Term 1 had not yet gotten under way, and already the demands of ML’s final year at Crozer were hanging over him. To officially complete seminary, every student needed to pass a battery of comprehensive examinations, both written and oral, during the fall of their third year. It was by no means a cakewalk; both Walter McCall and Marcus Wood would fail their first go-around.2

  The written portion consisted of “two three-hour written examinations” that were scheduled to begin on Thursday, September 7, nearly a week before the start of the term. According to the exam’s study guide, topics would span the entire Crozer curriculum, from the liberal theology espoused by George W. Davis to the practical perspective on the Gospels championed by Morton Enslin.3

  And ML couldn’t just spend the rest of the week preparing, because his other responsibilities demanded attention. As student body president, he was scheduled to address incoming students during orientation that same Thursday. And he was playing host to other members of the King family, who were in town for the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention (NBC). The event was being held in Philadelphia on September 6–10, and not only was Martin Sr. obliged to make his usual appearance, but Mama King was slated to play the organ for the “women’s division,” and Daddy King’s brother Joel, also a Baptist minister, was in attendance as well.4