by Patrick Parr
8. Stark, interview by Garrow.
9. Ibid.
10. Stewart, interview by Garrow.
11. The program can be found at the King Center Digital Archive, www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/crozer-theological-seminary-student-chapel-order-service . King was listed as the Devotions Committee Chairman in Crozer, Annual Catalogue 42, no. 1 (January 1950).
12. King, Papers, 6:106.
13. Davis, Existentialism and Theology, 80–81.
14. Whitaker, notes from interview by Branch; see also Whitaker, interview by Garrow.
15. Horace Whitaker mentioned that Mac and Davis crushed apples in the fall. Whitaker, notes from interview by Branch.
16. 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 41, no. 1 (January 1949). His GPA was computed using current academic calculation methods (e.g., B = 3.0), weighted by credit hours. For those interested in additional scheduling details, on September 12, 1949, the Chester Times published the following list of vespers speakers. September 15: Charles E. Batten, Dean of Students, Crozer. September 22: Dr. Frederick K. Stamm, Congregational Minister and Host of NBC Radio’s Highlights of the Bible. September 29: Dr. E. Felix Kloman, Minister, Christ Church, Philadelphia. October 6: Dr. Morton S. Enslin, New Testament Professor, Crozer. October 13: Rev. Mervin A. Heller, Executive Secretary, Reading Council of Churches, Reading, PA. October 20: Dr. George W. Davis, Christian Theology Professor, Crozer. October 27: Rev. Thomas E. Ellis, Minister, Grace Baptist Church, Belleville, NJ. November 3: Dr. Reuben E. E. Harkness, Church History Professor, Crozer. November 10: Rev. R. Stuart Grizzard, Minister, Orange Baptist Church, Orange, VA. Nov. 17: Edward C. Starr, Curator, American Baptist Historical Society, Crozer. December 8: Dr. James B. Pritchard, Old Testament Professor, Crozer.
17. “Pleas for Deeper Theology Made at Crozer Session,” Chester Times, September 13, 1950. Davis also discussed Christian theology in this manner with new students during the 1949 September orientation.
18. King, Papers, 1:232.
19. Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 81.
20. Barbour, “A Defense of the Negro Preacher,” in Reid, The Negro Baptist Ministry, 13–14.
21. Helen Hunt Reports, Chester Times, October 22, 1949. The service took place the next day, October 23.
22. Barbour, “A Defense of the Negro Preacher,” in Reid, The Negro Baptist Ministry, 13–14.
23. Crozer, Annual Catalogue 42, no. 1 (January 1950).
24. King, Papers, 1:211–224.
25. Quoted in ibid., 211.
26. From a paper for George Davis, collected in King, Papers, 1:234.
27. William Moitz’s death was reported in an obituary in the Chester Times, May 9, 1949.
28. Moitz, correspondence with the author, September 2014–February 2016, and interview by the author, January 3, 2016.
29. The poll can be found on Gallup’s website, www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx. The book Interracialism, a collection of essays edited by Werner Sollors (Oxford University Press, 2000), helped with the history.
30. Pyle, interview by Garrow.
31. Moitz, correspondence with the author, and interview by the author.
32. Ibid. ML also shared his torment with Horace Whitaker, as indicated in Whitaker, interview by Garrow, and notes from interview by Branch.
33. Stark, interview by Garrow. The quote comes from Walter Stark’s wife, who joined her husband’s interview.
34. Pyle, interview by Garrow.
5. Mordecai’s Fire: Term 2, November 29, 1949–February 15, 1950
1. King, Papers, 1:272.
2. Ibid., 4:475.
3. “Truman, Pope Appeal for World Peace,” Chester Times, December 23, 1949.
4. Beshai, correspondence with the author, February 21, 2016.
5. King, Papers, 6:104.
6. Ibid.
7. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 92.
8. Barbour made these comments in a September 1968 interview with biographer David L. Lewis, and they were placed in the endnotes of Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., 304.
9. Dr. Elizabeth Flower, “Experience with Martin Luther King,” essay in the Elizabeth F. Flower Papers, University Archives & Records Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Special thanks to UPenn archivist Tim Horning for helping with King’s UPenn professors.
10. 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 41, no. 1 (January 1949). His GPA was computed using current academic calculation methods (e.g., B = 3.0), weighted by credit hours.
11. Flower, “Experience.”
12. One longtime Chester resident recalled Confederate soldiers “being buried along the fence” at what would later be known as Chester Rural Cemetery. “Oldest Spanish American War Veteran Misses 1st May 30 Parade in 65 Years,” Chester Times, May 29, 1951.
13. Flower, “Experience.”
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. “African Americans at Penn,” University Archives & Records Center website, accessed October 19, 2017, www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/aframer/gallery.html.
18. Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 14
19. King, Papers, 6:106–107.
20. The minister is, full disclosure, my uncle Rev. Michael Frank. He graduated from Bethany Seminary and went on to become minister of Broadway Christian Church in Cleveland, Ohio, for forty-one years. His quotes are from e-mail correspondence, March 26, 2016.
21. Keighton, The Man Who Would Preach, 16.
22. Seward Hiltner, “How Far Can the Pastor Go in Counseling?,” Crozer Quarterly, April 1948, 100.
23. Barbour, letter to King, December 21, 1954, collected in King, Papers, 6:322–323. The examples of Longfellow, Plato, and Ovid were taken from sermons that ML preached over the summer of 1949, which can also be found in volume 6 of Papers.
24. Example taken from Hiltner, “How Far Can the Pastor Go,” 97–108.
25. Ibid. Speaking of the minister as a “spanker,” King mentioned to L. D. Reddick in Crusader Without Violence that Daddy King had spanked ML until he was fifteen years old.
26. Obituary for Seward Hiltner, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 1986, 76–78, http://journals.ptsem.edu/id/PSB1986071/dmd012.
27. Hiltner, “How Far Can the Pastor Go,” 97–108.
28. “His style of thinking” is from Thomasberger, interview by the author. “The atmosphere” is from King, letter to George W. Davis, December 1, 1953, collected in Papers 2:223.
29. Slapping incident related in Reddick, Crusader Without Violence, 60. L. D. Reddick’s book also does a good job of describing the Atlanta of ML’s childhood.
30. King, Papers, 1:281.
31. George W. Davis, “Liberalism and a Theology of Depth,” Crozer Quarterly 28 (January 1951): 195.
32. Davis, Existentialism and Theology, 82.
33. King, Papers, 1:295.
34. Helen Hunt Reports, Chester Times, January 14, 1950. The precise setting of the youth event would be the Grace Community United Methodist Church at 1213 Central Avenue in Chester, since the article refers to “Central av. above Concord rd.”
35. Though King delivered this speech often, it has been reported most frequently that he gave it on October 26, 1967, to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia. Video of his Barratt appearance is available online via the King Center, “MLK: What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?,” YouTube, July 6, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmsAxX84cjQ.
36. Ibid.
37. “Howard U. Prexy at Confab in India,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 17, 1949.
38. Quoted in McKinney, Mordecai, the Man and His Message, 327. Johnson was speaking in front of “650 dignitaries from the fourteen nations composing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)” in London, June 6, 1959.
39. “Cowardice Hurts White Southerners,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 15, 1949.
40. “Fisk Prexy Attends Conference in India,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 17, 1949; “Tartt Bell, in India, Tells of World Pacifist Sessions,” Anniston (AL) Star, December 22, 1949; “Dr. Mordecai Johnson on Indian Tour,” Journal and Guide (Norfolk, VA), December 10, 1949.
41. Quoted in James L. Hicks, “World’s Political Fate Rests with Dark Races,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 18, 1950. Johnson was speaking at the Essex House in New York to “200 members of the Howard Alumni Club of New York City.”
42. The precise date is unknown; ML stated that Dr. Johnson had “just returned” from India (King, Stride Toward Freedom, 96), so the event would probably have fallen somewhere between January and March 1950.
43. Peter C. Mohr, “Journey Out of Egypt: The Development of Negro Leadership in Alabama from Booker T. Washington to Martin Luther King,” thesis, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 638.
44. A. M. Rivera Jr., “Dr. Johnson Says World Will Feed All,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 13, 1949.
45. Ibid. The article compared the atmosphere of the Raleigh convention to that of “an old-fashioned camp meeting.” For Dr. Johnson’s experience delivering newspapers, see “Recipe for Success,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 10, 1951. Johnson recalled distributing papers “house to house in an entire section in my town, which is known as ‘West Paris.’”
46. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 83–84.
47. Christine King Farris, Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Lecture (Boston University, April 3, 2009), http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/videos/video?id=360354. The quote occurs around the forty-eight-minute mark.
48. Unattributed “Quotes” feature, Portsmouth (NH) Herald, May 28, 1949. The original source or setting for Dr. Johnson’s quote is unknown.
6. Chosen to Lead: Term 3, February 21–May 5, 1950
1. Moitz, e-mail correspondence with the author, October 4, 2014.
2. Ibid., October 5, 2014.
3. Moitz, interview by the author, January 3, 2016.
4. Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home, 50.
5. Whitaker, interview by Garrow.
6. Anecdote in Moitz, e-mail correspondence with the author, October 4, 2014, and interview by the author, January 3, 2016.
7. Betty’s Moore College of Art graduation is in Moitz, e-mail correspondence with the author, November 2, 2014.
8. R. E. E. Harkness, “The Scientific Spirit in Religion,” Religious Education, January 1, 1928.
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 41, no. 1 (January 1949). His GPA was computed using current academic calculation methods (e.g., B = 3.0), weighted by credit hours.
10. See, for instance, R. E. E. Harkness, “Roger Williams—Prophet of Tomorrow,” Journal of Religion 15, no. 4 (October 1935): 400–425.
11. Smith, notes from interview by Branch, November 3, 1983.
12. R. E. E. Harkness, “The Development of Democracy in the English Reformation,” Church History 8, no. 1 (March 1939): 3–29.
13. King, Papers, 1:313–327.
14. Martin Luther King Jr., A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson (New York: Warner Books, 2001), 161.
15. “Martin King Heads Crozer Student Body,” Chester Times, April 24, 1950. According to the article, voting had concluded a week before.
16. “Not all that big” is from Whitaker, interview by Garrow. “Indeed an honor” is in Marcus Wood, “Reflecting: My Life with the Late Martin Luther King,” typed report, May 5, 1986, found in folder 703, p. 1, Taylor Branch Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. The fourteen seminarians in ML’s middle-year class were Edwin Brooks, Percy Carter, Eugene Drew, James Greene, Robert Hopkins, Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Kirkland, Wendall Maloch, Walter McCall, Cyril Pyle, Nolton Turner, George Walton, Horace Whitaker, and Marcus Wood. The black students were Carter, King, Kirkland, McCall, Pyle, Whitaker, and Wood.
17. Stewart, interview by Garrow.
18. Stark, interview by Garrow.
19. Helen Hunt Reports, Chester Times, March 4, 1950.
20. Wood, And Grace Will Lead Me Home, 48–49.
21. “NAACP to Meet” in “Lodge to Hold Open House,” News Journal (Wilmington, DE), May 4, 1950.
22. Picture in Your Mind, directed by Philip Stapp (1948).
23. “Lodge to Hold Open House,” News Journal.
Interlude: The Summer of 1950
1. McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes.
2. In case you’re wondering, the “Three Levels of Fellowship” were based on the concepts of sensuality, economics, and love. Further details can be found in King, Papers, 6:107. Recollections from ML’s childhood friend are in Williams, notes from interview by Branch.
3. Dobbs Butts, interview by the author.
4. King Sr., Daddy King, 128.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. “Statement of Pearl E. Smith (colored),” interview by Chief Clifford D. Cain, County Detectives Office (Mount Holly, NJ, August 28, 1950). As for Ernest Nichols, according to Linn Washington, “The Dream Started Here,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 1989, Nichols was “born in Germany,” and “entered his country’s armed forces when he was 16 and served in World War I, first as a gunner on a submarine and later in the German army.” Once the war concluded, he “immigrated to the United States.”
8. Blue-collar clientele and other details come from two primary sources: Judge W. Thomas McGann, “Dr. Martin Luther King’s Passage Through the County,” Burlington County Times, February 9, 1986; and Lawlor and Washington, “Beginnings.”
9. The official statement by Nichols’s attorney W. Thomas McGann is collected King, Papers, 1:327–329. It provides a more favorable explanation for why Mr. Nichols acted the way he did, claiming it was well known that Mr. Nichols had served “colored patrons” before.
10. “Statement of Pearl E. Smith (colored).”
11. See, for instance, Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, 27–28.
12. “Statement of Pearl E. Smith (colored).” See also Papers, 1:329 for the official complaint document signed by Pearl, ML, and Mac (but not Doris Wilson). Pearl’s and ML’s names are crossed out—perhaps because, as explained later in the interlude, they eventually withdrew their participation.
13. Lawlor and Washington, “Beginnings.”
14. Ted Poston, “He Never Liked to Fight!,” New York Post, reprinted in Baltimore Afro-American, June 15, 1957.
15. Quote from the Maple Shade solicitor, George Barbour (not related to Rev. Barbour), is from Washington, “Before Montgomery.” Other details in the case were in “N.J. Inn Keeper Held After Four Charge Refusal,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 20, 1950. (A massive thank-you to Maple Shade activist and researcher Patrick Duff for digging up gems such as this.) Mac’s thank-you is from McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes.
16. Farris, Through It All, 71.
17. Ibid.
18. Christine’s quote is in ibid., 72. Title of ML’s sermon is from King, Papers, 6:46.
19. Washington, “Before Montgomery.”
20. Mac’s quote is in McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes. Almanina’s is in Washington, “Before Montgomery.”
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21. The attorney’s quote is in McGann, “Dr. Martin Luther King’s Passage.” He recalls McCall’s involvement in Lawlor and Washington, “Beginnings.”
22. McCall, transcript of interview by Holmes.
23. Carrie Harper, Atlanta News, Pittsburgh Courier, July 15, 1950.
24. Poston, “He Never Liked to Fight!”
25. “Rev. King Lauds City on Strides to Integration,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 28, 1961. ML’s commentary is noteworthy not only for describing the incident as a “sit-in” (which contemporary reports and the accounts of Pearl Smith and Walter McCall make clear was not literally true) but also for claiming that the Reverend Ray Ware was with him during the incident at Mary’s Café. Nowhere could I find evidence that Ray Ware was involved.