Becoming King (11 page)

During summer breaks, King used his opportunities to preach at Ebenezer to further refine themes that bridged his emerging theology with the expectations of a congregation. In “Loving Your Enemies,” King called his listeners to examine themselves, to “see the good points in your enemy,” and not to seek their adversary’s demise even when the opportunity presented itself. King argued that one should love one’s enemy “because the process of hate for hate brings disaster to all involved,” “because hate distorts the whole personality,” and “because love has within it a redemptive power.” This sermon contains many of the essential elements of the social ethic King would one day preach to the world. Eighteen months before he first ascended to the pulpit at Dexter, King’s vision for social change had already taken shape, and at its core was the revolutionary power of love found in the teachings of Jesus.
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Despite King’s core commitment to ideas of social and economic change, he was far from the front lines of the struggle already emerging in the South. He was a radical scholar and preacher, but not yet an activist. In Montgomery, Alabama, however, radical activists like E. D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Jo Ann Robinson were already hard at work. Six weeks after King’s sermon on love at Ebenezer, Jo Ann Robinson penned a letter to the editor of the
Montgomery Advertiser.
Noting that a local five-and-dime store had recently added two separate lunch counters for blacks and whites, she offered praise for the store’s manager, noting he “deserves much credit for realizing that Negro people, too, must eat. Human frailty makes it utterly impossible for men, irrespective of color, to deny pangs of hunger or thirst.” Complaining that in many stores “even ice water is not available for Negroes,” she marveled at a water fountain at a local store “where all kinds of people drink: Sick people, well people, clean people, dirty people. The fountain has been so scientifically constructed that germs cannot get to the flow of water—that is from white faces anyway. Seemingly, only black faces can contaminate and make the water unfit for human consumption.” While King preached a Gospel of
love and justice, Robinson used humor as she publicly lobbied for opportunities she knew African Americans deserved. Robert D. Nesbitt Jr., the chairperson of the search committee at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, would help connect King with Robinson and other civil rights activists in Montgomery.
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Deacon Nesbitt was in Atlanta on a business trip when a friend told him he ought to visit with young King. Nesbitt felt a great deal of pressure as he searched for his congregation’s next pastor. He had led previous search teams that had resulted in two controversial pastors, each of whom had left under duress. The Dexter deacon decided to follow up on the lead and ended up in the home of one of Atlanta’s most prominent Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King Sr. Nesbitt liked what he saw in Daddy King’s eldest son, the promising Martin Luther King Jr. As the child of a pastor, young King knew the expectations and challenges of the pastorate. He was also a candidate for a doctoral degree, a feature that was sure to impress the many educators who regularly attended Dexter. Despite King Sr.’s misgivings about the strong deacon board and the “silk-stocking” reputation of Dexter, Nesbitt prevailed upon King Jr. to preach a sermon at the Montgomery church. For his part, King considered Dexter a promising opportunity and a suitable proving ground for the intellectually and socially engaged pastorate he had laboriously crafted, and he agreed to preach at the church in early January. In Montgomery, King’s Gospel would intersect with the public activism of Robinson, Nixon, Burks, and Parks. They were ready for each other. Nesbitt’s visit to the King home provided just the opportunity Martin Luther King Jr. needed to set him on a path that would propel him to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
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As 1954 dawned, Martin Luther King Jr. was aggressively pursuing various job opportunities. He had just completed his coursework and examination requirements for his doctorate at Boston University and hoped to find a teaching or pastoral position to support both himself and his wife while finishing his dissertation. Although tempted by academic opportunities, he preferred to begin his career as a pastor. Through Dexter Avenue Baptist Church deacon Robert Nesbitt, King received an invitation to preach a sermon at the historic Montgomery church, which was without a pastor following the departure of Vernon Johns. The day before he was scheduled to preach, he traveled from Atlanta to Montgomery with an unexpected passenger: Vernon Johns. The former Dexter pastor was preaching at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church the following morning.
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As the men drove, they passed within a few miles of the campus of Tuskegee Institute, where that very day NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall was delivering a keynote address for the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Attendees packed the chapel to hear the lawyer who had argued the pending
Brown v. Board of Education
case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall asserted that segregation was coming to an end, while also admitting that many southerners were willing to go to great lengths to impede any challenge to white supremacy, as evidenced by those “talking about calling out the militia and using other drastic measures.” He challenged his audience to “overcome the stigma of second
class citizenship in our own minds. There must be a willingness on the part of those who have college training and those who have money to help those who have neither.” Although King did not hear Marshall’s challenge, Montgomery was the type of place where he could demonstrate a willingness to make a contribution by going to the front line of the civil rights struggle.
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Several men and women in Alabama’s capital city were already pushing for substantive change. Some were even considering a boycott of city buses should white authorities not ensure better treatment for the African Americans who depended on public transit. Although King was not yet sure where he would serve, he was ready to do his part. In Montgomery, King would have the opportunity to rub shoulders with men and women who had been making a contribution to the freedom struggle for years. He would learn a great deal from them, and he would be emboldened by their courage and commitment. King would also provide a message of hope and become a much-needed bridge between the black economic classes in Montgomery. Before King could speak words that could move a nation, he had to first learn to use the spoken word to move a congregation and a community.

King decided to deliver one of his tested sermons, “The Dimensions of a Complete Life,” for the Dexter congregation. Knowing he would be evaluated on how well he preached, he was nervous: “That Saturday evening as I began going over my sermon, I was aware of a certain anxiety. Although I had preached many times before—having served as associate pastor of my father’s church in Atlanta for four years, and having done all of the preaching there for three successive summers—I was very conscious this time that I was on trial.” King knew the reputation of the Dexter congregation: relatively wealthy, educated, discriminating. Despite all of his experience behind the pulpit, he found himself wondering, “How could I best impress the congregation?” King’s sermon called on the congregation to make positive contributions in the lives of others: “The prayer that every man should learn to pray is, ‘Lord teach me to unselfishly serve humanity.’ No man should become so involved in his personal ambitions that he forgets that other people exist in the world. Indeed if my life’s work is not developed for the good of humanity, it is meaningless and Godless.” Should King become the pastor of Dexter, he
served notice that he would insist that the congregation resist the temptation to focus inwardly. As was the case in most southern cities during the 1950s, African American professionals faced the temptation to put caution first. King challenged them to elevate their commitment to the needs of others no matter what the cost.
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Following King’s trip to Montgomery, Dexter’s pulpit committee recommended that the congregation call King to serve as their next pastor, and the members unanimously supported the selection. The committee asked him to return so they could discuss the details of their offer. He made his way back to the racially divided city of Montgomery still unsure if he and his wife, Coretta, were ready to return to the South. The circumstances surrounding Miss Ophelia Hill’s funeral demonstrate the racial climate the Kings would encounter should they answer Dexter’s call. Hill, who served for over a quarter century as the supervisor of Montgomery’s African American schools, was a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. When she died, her largely white church refused to hold her funeral services, so her white rector officiated at the funeral service in a local Colored Methodist Episcopal church. Some of the pews in the church were labeled with signs reading, “Reserved for white friends.” Such incidents led Alabama native Virginia Durr, who had recently returned to the state after over a decade in Washington, D.C., to describe Montgomery as a place of “death, decay, corruption, frustration, bitterness and sorrow. The Lost Cause is right.” White supremacy was the dominant reality that affected the daily lives of black and white alike. Following nearly six years studying in the North, the King family had to assess the cost of reentering the heart of Dixie.
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A few days before King’s return trip, an article appeared in the town’s African American newspaper that further demonstrated racial tension in Montgomery. African American pastor and Alabama State College student Uriah J. Fields wrote to denounce the unequal treatment blacks continually received on city buses. He noted overcrowding on routes that serviced African American sections of town and lamented the way fares were collected from black riders. He also complained that African Americans often had “to stand up on buses when there are vacant seats in the front.” Fields challenged drivers to treat black female riders with dignity and kindness. After calling for immediate organization against those who
perpetuate degrading treatment on the buses, Fields laid out the following five recommendations:

Fields’s sentiments were not new, and they were not his alone. Members of the Women’s Political Council (WPC) and Pullman porter E. D. Nixon shared Fields’s frustrations. WPC president Jo Ann Robinson, wrote a letter to Montgomery mayor W. A. Gayle, offering her reflections on a recent meeting with city commissioners. The WPC had made three specific requests regarding city buses: that blacks fill seats from the back, and whites from the front, until all seats are taken; that blacks not have to exit and reenter in the back after paying; and that buses stop at every block in residential African American neighborhoods, as was the case in white sections of town. While Robinson reported progress on the number of stops many buses were making, the city had failed to address their seating and boarding concerns. Robinson then added: “More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers. There has even been talk from twenty-five or more organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses.”
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The letters by Fields and Robinson reveal not only the level of frustration over inequities in Montgomery, but also a willingness to speak up about the problems and to engage the city in seeking solutions. They also demonstrate different priorities among those seeking racial justice in the city. Although Fields’s letter included as an important demand the hiring of black bus drivers, Robinson’s letter failed to mention a desire for the bus company to employ African American drivers. This seemingly minor
divergence in priorities would remain a source of contention over the coming years, as leaders never unified around clear economic initiatives that would benefit the working class. Nevertheless, local activists were already contemplating bold tactics to challenge white supremacy as King returned to the city to negotiate the terms of his employment at Dexter.

The pulpit committee asked King to preach again during his second visit to Dexter. In his sermon titled “Going Forward by Going Backward,” he offered a harsh critique of society, which had pursued knowledge and materialism while neglecting timeless moral principles and a devotion to God that could transform the world into a “brotherhood.” Despite the destructive impulses of humanity, King urged the people of Dexter to cling to hope based on a firm belief in the ultimate triumph of justice and righteousness. Should King answer the call to Dexter, he intended to contribute to the local struggle by reminding his congregation to place their trust in God as they moved forward. King’s belief in the limitless power of God led him to articulate a message of hope even amidst Montgomery’s dehumanizing conditions.
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The possibilities at Dexter had piqued King’s interest, leading him to accept the offer to become the church’s pastor. He returned to Montgomery on May 2, 1954, and preached a version of “Accepting Responsibility for Your Actions.” King encouraged his listeners to not allow the excuses of heredity or environment to determine their lives, but instead to focus on their own responses to life’s challenges. Among his examples of those who had achieved despite hindrances were African American singers Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes as well as Abraham Lincoln. King tempered his previous emphasis on the individual and put his new congregation on notice regarding the type of leadership he would provide: “I happen to be a firm believer in what is called the ‘social gospel.’” King’s written manuscript does not flesh out his definition of the term, but he did emphasize the necessity of pursuing “social reform.” While King’s theological and social views broadened and sharpened during his years in seminary and graduate school, his basic concern for the goals of social change remained consistent. His commitment to the social gospel would move from theory to practice in the years ahead.
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