The Seminarian

by Patrick Parr

  While ML would have expected his family to swing by Crozer while they were in the area, he may have had a few twinges of annoyance, and not just at giving up precious study time. After all, Crozer and Philadelphia had been his second home for the last two years. Now, as student body president and a prominent local preacher, he had a certain reputation to maintain that might be threatened by parental encroachment.

  At one point during their visit, ML took Daddy King and Uncle Joel down into the basement of Old Main to show off his pool skills. Uncle Joel was stunned when ML, appearing to have no fear, lit a cigarette in front of his father. Daddy King had never had any patience for smoking, drinking, cursing, or even pool. Uncle Joel, considerably younger than Martin Sr., even remembered when he himself was in college and his brother smacked a cigar out of his mouth. But as they watched ML knock in a few pool balls, puffing away like a natural, Daddy King did nothing. Later, Uncle Joel asked his brother why he didn’t try to discipline ML there in the basement. Daddy King remained silent. “Never got an answer,” said Joel King.5 Martin Sr. must have realized that his son had outgrown such heavy-handed parenting.

  Though defiant in his leisure activities, in other respects ML was still following in his father’s footsteps. He joined Daddy King at the NBC meeting, even persuading Horace Whitaker and Walter McCall to attend. Probably borrowing his father’s car, he drove his two friends to the site of the event, an auditorium near the Thirtieth Street Station in downtown Philadelphia.6

  It was Whit’s first time attending such a gathering, and he found it reminiscent of a “mass jungle.” Whit watched in frustration as the ministers behind the pulpit onstage competed for attention with vendors strolling up and down the aisles “selling hats” and “shouting” at the attendees. Joel King, too, recalled that attendees would get so wound up at certain speakers that they would scream comments such as “If you pick up that mike, I’ll cut your heart out!” The rowdy energy was still good spirited, if surprising to first-time attendees.7

  At the time, the National Baptist Convention reported a membership of around four million people, predominantly African American. An estimated seven thousand delegates turned out for the annual meeting, which featured singing and pleas from Pennsylvania governor James Duff for tolerance and racial integration. The report issued after the event stated that attendees were pleased “to see the walls of injustice and inequality crumbling daily before our eyes.”8

  As soon as the NBC thunderstorm dispersed and ML’s family left the area, it was time for the start of classes—and for the comprehensive oral exam. The test would last for forty-five minutes to an hour and focus on two particular theological areas of the student’s choosing, but be broad enough to “discover the student’s ability to think in an integrative manner over all the areas of theological education.”9

  Despite ML’s demanding schedule, when both the written and oral examinations were completed, he stood out from the rest. In a note by Charles Batten to Morehouse College, the dean informed ML’s alma mater of the results. “We have just had a period of comprehensive examinations and only one man was granted honors in them; it was King.”10

  As ML turned his attention from what he’d learned in his first two years at Crozer to the final year that lay ahead of him, it would have been impossible to ignore the changes that were now roiling the school. The interim days of H. W. “Creeping Jesus” Smith were over. After a transition period that stretched over the latter two quarters of ML’s middle year, Dr. Sankey L. Blanton was now the seminary’s president, and he was eager to change its entire culture.

  Dr. Blanton was a man of the South, a fifty-two-year-old North Carolinian who had previously been the dean of religion at Wake Forest University. Blanton brought with him an influx of southern energy, including six of his former Wake Forest students whom he persuaded to enroll at Crozer. One of them, Jack Bullard, remembers witnessing firsthand the transformation Blanton sought. “He represented a change of direction. He wanted to counteract the direction Enslin had been taking the faculty.” Whereas Enslin was a brilliant New Testament scholar but an indifferent preacher, Blanton “wanted more of a practical focus. . . . They were interested in pastors, not theological scholars.”11

  The plan was not Blanton’s alone. Crozer’s board of trustees wanted to take advantage of a growing trend in America’s postwar religious culture—away from biblical scholarship and toward the populist appeal of charismatic evangelistic preachers—to not just increase enrollment but spike it. Thanks to Blanton’s efforts during the transition period, the school was already seeing results: while ML’s class had dwindled in his last year to only eleven students, the incoming junior class was a group of twenty-eight students who’d come from as far away as Oregon.12

  The proposed realignment may have been good for the school’s enrollment numbers, but it represented a seismic jolt to Professors Enslin and Pritchard and the other members of the Crozer community who had embraced their academic approach. “Some of the people didn’t care for Blanton trying to make it a preacher’s school,” recalls one Crozer student. “It was supposed to be a scholar’s school. There were arguments.”13 Says Bullard, “There was great tension between the faculty and him.”14

  Nevertheless, some faculty members would thrive in the new environment. Robert Keighton fit right in with the emphasis on practicality, while other professors, such as George Davis, were prized for their ability to bridge the growing divide between scholar and pastor.

  As the student body president, ML would have paid close attention to the power struggle among the faculty. But he would also have been keenly aware of another rift that was developing within the student body. As Blanton sought to bring a southern perspective—and more southern students—to Crozer, tension grew between seminarians from the North and those from the South. On one side were young southern Baptist seminarians looking to refine their oratorical skills. On the other were the northern seminarians who had been sold on Crozer’s reputation as a liberal, scholarly institution. And yet it wasn’t the northern seminarians who tended to be the more academically accomplished. “Usually the southern students were from the good schools in the South,” says Jack Bullard, “and the northern students were from run-of-the-mill schools.” This only exacerbated the division. “You had a bunch of Southerners who felt they were the cream of the crop.”15

  Standing apart from these domestic conflicts were Crozer’s three international students. Joining returning students Makoto Sakurabayashi and En-Chin Lin was new arrival Jimmy Beshai, who’d traveled from Cairo, Egypt, to Chester on an $800 scholarship. According to Jimmy, international students were treated as “adjuncts rather than members of the divinity school,” but they participated in all aspects of seminary life as they completed the two-year Oriental certificate program. Besides taking many of the same classes as ML, Jimmy also met with other seminarians in the basement to play pool. “It was the first time for me to play eight ball,” Jimmy recalls.

  He also remembers what it was like to reside in Old Main: “I lived in a corner room overlooking the campus from one side, and the Delaware River from the other side.” Every room came with its own radio, and maids “took care of cleaning the linens. It was a very adequate dormitory. There was a very small but beautiful library . . . and the kind of food Hannah Moitz cooked for us was a mix of German and Pennsylvania meals with frequent Dutch beef porridge. It was good and I missed it on the weekends. No meals were served on weekends, but Mrs. Moitz had milk and cheese in the refrigerator.”16

  Jimmy’s room was at the end of Old Main’s second floor, only a few doors down from ML’s. Walter McCall’s room was “adjacent to mine. . . . He used to wake up the whole floor at six to get ready for breakfast before classes at eight . . . waking me up every morning with a loud knock on my door. Walter was taller and more vocal in conversation. We used to call him ‘Governor’ for that reason.”17

  As for ML, “we often sat together for supper.” Jimmy remembers one m
eal in particular from early in the year. ML took a seat across from Jimmy, naturally curious about how he might be viewed by someone from outside American culture. To start with, ML asked Jimmy about the conditions of racial prejudice in Egypt. Jimmy replied that there wasn’t racial prejudice but rather religious prejudice. After a moment or two, ML asked Jimmy a very direct question: “How do you see me?” At first, Jimmy wasn’t sure how to respond, but then he settled on a neutral statement: “I see you as an American, like the rest of Americans.”18

  From left to right: James “Jimmy” Beshai (Egypt), Makoto Sakurabayashi (Japan), and En-Chin Lin (China) outside Old Main, circa 1950. Courtesy of Dr. James Beshai

  ML couldn’t help but smile. “Shoot, man,” ML said. “I am a Negro.” To Jimmy, ML wasn’t being confrontational—he was simply attempting to develop his global outlook. “I spent more time with Martin than I did with other Crozer students, because Martin was president . . . and he took an interest in international affairs. He was interested in Egypt, and we seemed to pick the same courses by Davis, Enslin, and Kenneth Smith.”19

  Kenneth “Snuffy” Smith was Crozer’s new young professor of Applied Christianity, fresh off completing the coursework for his PhD at Duke. Like George Davis, he would play a unifying role at a changing Crozer, fusing President Blanton’s emphasis on evangelization with the school’s long tradition of theological scholarship.

  Smith had graduated from Crozer himself in May 1948, sharpening his Christian perspective under the tutelage of Davis, Pritchard, Enslin, and Keighton. It was Professor Davis with whom he connected the most, and Davis’s admiration of Walter Rauschenbusch’s A Theology for the Social Gospel influenced Smith toward a liberal theology. He was back at his alma mater now “on fire,” filled with a desire to create change via the social gospel.*1

  All of this would make Smith an ideal mentor figure for ML: someone with whom he could spend hours discussing philosophy, someone who would fan the flames of his dedication to social action. But before he could become ML’s mentor, he would be his rival: the young professor had also returned to Crozer with the desire to rekindle his previous relationship with Betty Moitz.

  Kenneth Lee Smith was born near Exmore, Virginia, in 1925. After a bit of a difficult childhood, Smith learned to distinguish himself through academic achievement. In high school, though, he stood out for more superficial reasons: barely five feet tall with a slow, aw-shucks southern drawl, he seemed to remind many fellow students of a cartoon character. “In the comic section of the newspaper, there was a Snuffy Smith,” his wife, Esther, explains. “Somebody in high school started calling him that, and it followed him all through his life.” In the comic strip, the character of Snuffy was a hillbilly who loved playing cards and drinking moonshine. Smith was of course no hillbilly, but his relaxed, easygoing manner and drawl may have misled a few people meeting him for the first time.20

  Smith graduated from the University of Richmond in 1945 and went on to Crozer the following fall. He was the first seminarian to grab Betty Moitz’s attention in the dining hall, and they began dating. They were involved until May 1948, four months before ML’s arrival. When Smith graduated and chose to pursue his PhD at Duke, they agreed to call it off. Their paths were going in different directions.21

  Now he was back at Crozer. At twenty-five, he was the youngest faculty member by far, and he chose to live on the second floor of Old Main with the single seminarians. Most new professors would have had trepidations about living so close to their students, but Smith was very familiar with the school’s liberal, doors-unlocked, interracial culture. Living in Old Main was akin to coming home again.

  He fit in quickly with students, some of whom were older than him. During the day, he was a professor in command of his theology, but at night he was happy to go out for an occasional drink in Chester or play eight ball in the catacombs of Old Main. According to Jimmy Beshai, Smith “was very unassuming in his manners. He did not hide that he liked to have beer when he went out.”22 Smith would engage the students in late-night debates, most often around the pool table but also in his own dorm room, which had a bit of extra space that created an office-like atmosphere.

  He felt a particular connection with fellow southern Baptists like ML, Whit, and Mac. “We dropped the g’s on the ends of our words,” Smith explained. “We talked the same way.” But he related more easily to the outgoing Mac than to ML, whom he at first found “reserved” and “humorless.”23

  And, of course, one issue in particular came between them. Soon after returning to campus, Snuffy began mentioning to others that he and Betty were going steady. But ML, perhaps with Mac’s encouragement, informed Smith that he and Betty were now going out.

  The two men—student body president and first-year professor—remained civil, attempting to laugh off the situation. But ML had reason to wonder whether the newcomer could indeed come between him and Betty. After all, Snuffy not only had a history with her but was also close with the Moitz family. “My parents loved Snuffy,” Betty says. Miss Hannah knew him so well that she could fry his bologna just the way he liked it.24 And now he was a full-fledged faculty member.

  Eventually, Betty made her choice clear. “Snuffy,” she recalls, “asked me to go to dinner several times a week after he came back as a professor. He began to tell people I was ‘his girl.’ I stopped going out with him.”25 With Smith out of picture, ML began to seriously consider the possibility of a future with Betty.

  ML’s friends sensed how serious he was getting about Betty Moitz, and all of them, except for Walter McCall, worried about how this would affect his future plans. According to Marcus Wood, “The more we warned [ML] that marriage was out of the question—especially if he hoped to become a pastor in the south—the more he refused to ‘break off’ the potentially controversial relationship.”26

  ML’s counterargument had two components. The first, of course, was the obvious one: He loved Betty. She listened to him, supported him, and greatly admired his ambitions. He could see himself marrying her. The second was a symbolic component: Wouldn’t their union also be a powerful statement that barriers can be brought down? It could serve as living proof of his belief in the idea of social integration.

  Late one night, after making out with Betty on a bench near Old Main, a smitten ML headed over to Horace Whitaker’s apartment. He needed guidance, and though he trusted Mac, it was time to turn to an older and more settled friend.

  “They were very serious,” Whit remembered, “although he was young.” Whit felt a certain sense of dread in telling ML to deny his feelings toward Betty:

  Rev. Horace Edward Whitaker, or “Whit,” in his Crozer apartment in 1951. Courtesy of Horace Edward Whitaker Jr.

  I’m not saying he wasn’t mature enough for that kind of experience, but I remember talking to him about that kind of marital situation . . . and we had talked about it from the standpoint that if he intended going back to the South and pastoring at a local church, that that might not be an acceptable kind of relationship in a black Baptist church, and I think he would be valuing that in light of whether or not it was a workable situation, knowing his own particular sense of call.27

  Eight years later, King himself would say in a sermon that “there is more integration in the entertaining world, in sports arenas, than there is in the Christian church.”28 That was the reality Whit was urging his friend to consider. Would ML’s predominantly black congregation fully accept it if their preacher had a white wife? Was Betty prepared to handle life as the spouse of a black southern minister? Or was ML willing to give up on returning to the South? Could he be content to remain in the North and obtain a position in academia, contributing to the southern cause in some other way?

  Whit’s mature and tempered words meant a great deal to ML, but they were not enough to convince him to end the relationship. Soon after, ML brought Betty over to the home of Rev. J. Pius Barbour. To his old sparring partner, he proposed a new topic of debate: Why can’t you s
imply marry us right now?

  ML laid out his two-pronged argument for their relationship, the emotional and the symbolic, and mentor and student went back and forth. Almanina Barbour recalled her father telling the young man that an “interracial marriage would never be accepted in this society.”29 ML countered that they were in the free North, in love, living in a state that had, at least legally, accepted interracial marriage. So why should society continue to get in the way?

  As Betty listened, she understood quickly that it wasn’t so simple. She loved ML, and her mother liked him as well, but support from ML’s side of friends and family appeared to be nonexistent. It wasn’t that they agreed with society’s disapproval, but they feared that this was one battle with the system he could never win, and never come back from. Rev. Barbour “discouraged the whole thing,” Betty says. “He told ML how bad it’d be for his career.”30

  In the end, it was ML’s decision to make, and we have no firsthand account as to how he reached it. Some believed that pressure from respected elders like Rev. Barbour tipped the scales; according to Marcus Wood, “A group of local pastors finally got the point across and the relationship ended.”31 But as much as ML respected Barbour, he was never afraid to argue the contrary opinion, and he was likely to see the coordinated word of a group of local pastors as an unwelcome blast of paternal judgment.

  Though ML had initially dismissed it, Whit’s advice was probably more persuasive in the end. It was Whit who could engage with him not as a concerned mentor but as a friend, a husband, and a father. His role as a family man would have been particularly valuable, since ML had shared one last concern that night in Whit’s apartment: how to bring Betty home to meet his parents.