The Seminarian
Page 25
26. King, Papers, 1:161.
27. Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984.
28. Grades found in folder 703, p. 109, Taylor Branch Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. The quote is from Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 29, 1984.
29. See Thelen, ed., Journal of American History 78, for a roundtable discussion about King’s plagiarism.
30. King, Papers, 1:181–195
31. James B. Pritchard to Coretta Scott King, February 22, 1987, quoted in King, Papers, 1:162. See also Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984: “We knew [King] best as a babysitter. We paid 35 cents an hour to babysit with our girls.”
32. I mapped out King’s campus options during my August 2014 and January 2016 visits to Old Main, with help from Crozer, Annual Catalogue 40, no. 1 (January 1948). “He was a normal human being” is from Whitaker, interview by Garrow.
33. E. E. Aubrey, “Junior Orientation Outline,” folder 33, box 2, Edwin E. Aubrey Papers, courtesy of University Archives & Records Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
34. “Stern and unyielding” in Whitaker, interview by Garrow. “Stern” again and “Dumbest class” in Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home, 45. Wood added, “Dr. Aubrey informed us that we would certainly have to study more, if we hoped to graduate. He kept pointing out that Crozer was a ‘high-class’ school, and that he intended to keep it that way . . . an attitude that seemed to be contradicted, only two months later, when he resigned his post and took a position at the University of Pennsylvania.” Ibid., 45–46.
35. Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984.
36. Aubrey, “Junior Orientation Outline.”
37. Date of Cassady’s death reported in Crozer, Annual Catalogue 41, no. 1 (January 1949). A front-page obituary in the Chester Times, October 25, 1948, mentioned Cassady’s illness, which had lasted several months. In it, Aubrey called Cassady “one of the most outstanding men in his field in the country.” The test was penciled in on Aubrey’s “Junior Orientation Outline.”
38. ML’s grade can be found on his Crozer transcript, available at the King Center Digital Archive, www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlks-transcript-crozer-theological-seminary.
39. Proctor, The Substance of Things Hoped For, 51.
40. Ibid.
41. First published by the Crozer Quarterly in 1948, then later included in Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 121–126.
42. Lawrence, notes from interview by Branch. Rev. George Lawrence was a student of Keighton’s, a year behind King. Keighton told Lawrence directly that professors chided him about knowing Shakespeare better than the Bible.
43. Smith, notes from interview by Branch. It’s clear Kenneth Smith disliked Keighton; he said the professor’s courses wouldn’t have helped King because they didn’t help him.
44. This is the impression left by Keighton’s The Man Who Would Preach, in which he consistently urges ministers to improve their status and find ways of increasing dignity.
45. Beshai, correspondence with the author, January 17, 2016.
46. “Product of his environment” is from Warren, King Came Preaching, 31. “Little evidence” is from Frank Galey and Jack Hopkins, “‘He Had Very Definite Feeling About Rights,’” Delaware County Daily Times, April 5, 1968.
47. King, Papers, 6:72.
48. Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home, 47.
49. Exact location of the chapel confirmed on my August 2014 visit to Old Main.
50. Lischer, The Preacher King, 26, does an excellent job describing the life of MLK as a “PK,” or preacher’s kid.
51. Hoopes, correspondence with the author.
52. “Crozer Seminary Holds Candlelight Service Tuesday,” Chester Times, December 19, 1949.
53. Hoopes, correspondence with the author. “Text painting” could also be used to describe the way a preacher modulates his or her voice. When attempting to uplift or energize an audience, his or her vocal pitch will scale upward. When attempting to discuss death and sadness, his or her voice will soften and scale down.
54. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 3, indicates that King “did quite a bit of walking during seminary.”
55. Barbour, “A Defense of the Negro Preacher,” in Reid, The Negro Baptist Ministry, 13–14.
56. Whitaker, interview by Garrow.
57. “One of my sons” is in Galey and Hopkins, “‘He Had Very Definite Feeling.’” “He could eat more” is from Lewis, King, 28. “Full of fun” is included in King, Papers, 1:161–162.
58. Lischer, The Preacher King, 67–71, does a great job describing King’s relationship with Barbour. It is also where the term “Barbour University” (coined by Crozer students) first appears in print.
59. Glen Justice, “Chester Remembers a Minister’s Minister,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 7, 1994.
60. Galey and Hopkins, “‘He Had Very Definite Feeling.’”
61. Whitaker, interview by Garrow. Whitaker also mentions how King would come over to his place to talk.
62. Gandhi discussions mentioned both by Horace Whitaker and Marcus Wood in their interviews by Garrow.
63. The a matter of arithmetic sentiment was conveyed by Barbour in the National Baptist Voice, March 1956, and is quoted in King, Papers, 3:16–17.
64. Pennsylvania Remembers Dr. King (video, Commonwealth Media Services, 1991), available online via Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, YouTube, January 19, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLQiJNBI_6Q. This twenty-minute video spotlights Professor Kenneth L. “Snuffy” Smith and the Barbour family, among others.
65. One example of his commentary in the Chester Times was a letter to the editor from July 31, 1948, in which he spoke out in favor of economic justice: “The truth of the matter is that we have reached a state in our economy where our old ideas of laissez-faire and the law of supply and demand are entirely outmoded.” Barbour’s salary is mentioned in Lischer, The Preacher King, 68.
66. Pennsylvania Remembers Dr. King (video).
67. ML’s letter to his mother is from October 1948, and is collected in King, Papers, 1:161.
68. Peters, “Our Weapon Is Love,” 72
69. “Charles Turney Remembers Martin Luther King” Dispatch, January 16, 1991. Turney would end up becoming a professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC.
2. Breaking Free: Term 2, November 30, 1948–February 16, 1949
1. McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes.
2. Ted Poston, “He Never Liked to Fight!,” New York Post, reprinted in Baltimore Afro-American, June 15, 1957.
3. Quotes in this paragraph and background in the opening paragraphs in McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes.
4. Ibid.
5. Daddy King’s reputation was also mentioned by Marcus Wood, in interviews and his book And Grace Will Lead Me Home.
6. In both Whitaker’s and Wood’s interviews by Garrow, the men recounted very clearly the constant life struggles of Walter McCall, the man who just couldn’t seem to catch a break. In spite of my ailments is a McCall quote recalled in Wood, notes from interview by Branch.
7. Whitaker, notes from interview by Branch.
8. McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes. Mac quotes the song’s lyrics during the interview.
9. Dr. Lloyd Burrus, “The King’s Daughter,” New York Amsterdam News, July 13, 1974. The article was released a week after ML’s mother was shot to death while playing the organ at Ebenezer.
10. Moitz, correspondence with the author, September 2014–February 2016, and interview by the author, January 4, 2016. Information on Eddystone High School was confirmed via “95 Awarded Diplomas at Eddystone Graduation,” Chester Times, June 7, 1946.
11. Moitz, e-mail correspondence with the author, November 2, 2014
.
12. Moitz, e-mail correspondence with the author, October 3, 2014.
13. Wood, interview by Garrow.
14. ML’s daily class schedule was reconstructed by collating his transcript (available at the King Center Digital Archive, www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlks-transcript-crozer-theological-seminary) with the course titles and schedules listed in Crozer, Annual Catalogue 40, no. 1 (January 1948). His GPA was computed using current academic calculation methods (e.g., B = 3.0), weighted by credit hours.
15. Warren, King Came Preaching, 31. Warren interviewed Enslin on March 7, 1966.
16. Thomasberger, interview by the author. Joe Thomasberger entered Crozer the fall after King graduated and had the pleasure of learning from Pritchard and Enslin back to back. In interviews Pritchard and Enslin are often spoken of in the same sentence.
17. Lawrence, notes from interview by Branch.
18. Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984. Trustee quote is from Tasker, interview by the author. Dorothy Tasker was married to William Robert “Bill” Tasker, a former classmate of King’s, two years behind. Dorothy Tasker served as the president and a member of the Crozer board of trustees.
19. Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984; Tasker, interview by the author.
20. Beshai, correspondence with the author, September 10, 2016.
21. Beshai, interview with the author.
22. King, Papers, 1:195–209.
23. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 79.
24. Wood, notes from interview by Branch.
25. King, Papers, 6:84
26. Taylor Branch laid out a variety of sermon styles in Branch, Parting the Waters, 76–77.
27. Assembled from material in King, Papers, 6:80–85.
28. Glen Justice, “Chester Remembers a Minister’s Minister,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 7, 1994.
29. Dan Hardy, “Recalling Their Friend, Dr. King,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 14, 1990. Biographical background on Barbour is from Betty Hibbert, “J. Pius Barbour Has Preached at Church 31 Years,” Delaware County Daily Times, February 22, 1964.
30. King, Papers, 6:80.
31. Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home.
32. Lischer, The Preacher King, 69. Lischer found the quoted text in the Boston University archives “on the inside cover of one of his class notebooks.” Lischer suggests that ML should have been focusing on Aquinas and Augustine when he scribbled his note, which probably means it was written during Davis’s Great Theologians class.
33. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 15.
34. King, Papers, 6:103.
35. Smith, notes from interview by Branch, November 3, 1983.
36. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 79.
37. “Most beautiful spot in Chester” was related most directly in Tasker, interview by the author. Chevy “Power Glide” is from Whitaker, notes from interview by Branch.
38. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 41.
39. Dupree Jordan, “Pride Worse Foe Than Reds, Theologian Says,” Chester Times, December 13, 1948.
40. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 40.
41. Ibid.
42. Jordan, “Pride Worse Foe Than Reds.”
43. Farris, Through It All, 46
44. Ibid., 45, 48.
45. Ibid., 49
46. Mac’s recollections, like most of Mac’s words in this book, came from McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes. “Eating is my great sin” can be found in Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 3.
47. Farris, Through It All, 49.
48. Stone, notes from interview by Branch.
49. Wood, interview by Garrow.
50. Moitz, interview by the author, January 3, 2016, and e-mail correspondence with the author, October 3, 2014.
3. Finding a Voice: Term 3, February 22–May 6, 1949
1. Untitled article, Chester Times, February 26, 1949.
2. A version of this sermon is included in King, Papers, 6:88–90. The book speculates that King delivered it on March 3, pointing to a reference in the text to boxer Joe Louis retiring “two nights ago,” but this was likely a preliminary reference based on the date when King was writing that part of the sermon. My assumption that he gave the sermon on March 9 is based on a newspaper account (Helen Hunt Reports, Chester Times, March 9, 1949) that names “Rev. Martin L. King” as the speaker at a Calvary event that day.
3. Farris, Through It All, 45.
4. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Random House, 2015; orig. publ. 1969), 32.
5. King, Papers, 6:88–90.
6. Pennsylvania Remembers Dr. King (video, Commonwealth Media Services, 1991), available online via Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, YouTube, January 19, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLQiJNBI_6Q.
7. Linn Washington, “Dr. Martin L. King’s Battles Against Racial Discrimination Began in Philadelphia Region,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 17, 1997. Washington wrote some wonderful annual tributes to Dr. King throughout the 1990s.
8. Pennsylvania Remembers Dr. King (video).
9. ML’s daily class schedule was reconstructed by collating his transcript (available at the King Center Digital Archive, www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlks-transcript-crozer-theological-seminary) with the course titles and schedules listed in Crozer, Annual Catalogue 40, no. 1 (January 1948). His GPA was computed using current academic calculation methods (e.g., B = 3.0), weighted by credit hours.
10. Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 13
11. Pritchard, notes from interview by Branch, June 25, 1984.
12. Pennsylvania Remembers Dr. King (video).
13. Enslin, Christian Beginnings, 373–388.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Enslin, recommendation letter for ML, collected in King, Papers, 1:382.
17. Toyohiko Kagawa, Kagawa in Lincoln’s Land, edited by Emerson O. Bradshaw, Charles E. Shike, and Helen F. Topping (New York: National Kagawa Co-ordinating Committee, 1936), https://archive.org/stream/kagawainlincolns00kaga.
18. Ibid.
19. R. Schildgen, “How Race Mattered: Kagawa Toyohiko in the United States,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 5, no. 3/4 (Fall–Winter 1996): 227–253, via JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23612675.
20. Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 50.
21. Ibid., 46.
22. Crozer’s Annual Catalogue editions for 1948–1951 (vols. 40–43) detail the amenities of Old Main, such as the tennis court. Many seminarians mentioned their pool, Ping-Pong, and shuffleboard games during interviews.
23. King, Papers, 6:594
24. Ibid., 105–106
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
Year II: Exodus
4. A New Devotion: Term 1, September 13–November 23, 1949
1. King, Papers, 2:322.
2. McKinney, interview by the author.
3. Barbour, “A Defense of the Negro Preacher,” in Reid, The Negro Baptist Ministry, 13–14.
4. All of the sermons in this section can be found in King, Papers, 6:90, 94, and 97.
5. Stewart, interview by Garrow.
6. Smith’s quote is from “Dr. H. W. Smith Appointed Interim President at Crozer,” Chester Times, May 10, 1949. The description of Smith comes from Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home; and Wood, notes from interview by Branch.
7. The descriptions of Sakurabayashi and En-Chin Lin are from Stewart, notes from interview by Branch. Lin’s educational info comes from the University of Pennsylvania commencement catalogs for June 1949 and February 1955, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Archives. En-Chin Lin ended up earning his doctorate from UPenn in 1955, with a dissertation titled “Educational Changes in China Since the Establishment of the People’s Republic and Some Steps Leading to Them.” Most of Crozer’s previous int
ernational students had also come from China, including three Chinese students who completed their Oriental certificates in May 1949: Dorothy Lei Hsu (Foochow), Yu-En Hsu (Foochow), and Matthew Pek-Lok Wai (Shanghai). Crozer, Annual Catalogue 42, no. 1 (January 1950): 40, 43.