By Carol Fisher-Linn
MLK was not always known as Martin Luther King. When King, Jr. was five, his father became inspired by the writings of 16th century theologian, Martin Luther. King was so moved by the courage and tenacity Luther had as one of the major participants of the Protestant Reformation that he wanted to emulate him. He did so by beginning to call himself and his son, Michael, Martin Luther King.
In 1944, prior to his acceptance (at age 15) and then again in 1947 while at Morehouse College, King Jr. spent two summers with other Morehouse college students earning tuition by working at Cullman Brothers, a northern tobacco farm in Simsbury, Connecticut. It is believed that some of his experiences in that period of his life essentially shaped his world view and pathway as a civil rights leader. He was pleased (and perhaps surprised) to report in his letters back home that work was easy, and food was plentiful. In those letters, King expressed dismay as he realized that all of America was not like the world he knew in the South. Connecticut, while not free of racism, was a far cry from what King knew of the segregated South. He was amazed to find a different kind of world than the one he was raised in. In one letter to home in 1944 he wrote, “I never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere but we ate in one of the finest restaurants in Hartford. And we went to the largest shows there.”
“He could not believe how African Americans had the freedom to come and go,” William Flippin, pastor of Greater Piney Grove Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, said. “He was amazed that Blacks didn’t have to go to the balcony to go to a theater, they could eat in restaurants, they didn’t have to sit in the back of the bus. And so those were experiences that informed his later life.”
King also worshipped in a de-segregated church in Connecticut. He couldn’t believe he was writing to his mother that “Negroes and whites go to the same church.” In that summer of 1944, he led religious discussions in his dorm, later indicating on his application for seminary school that this was a turning point in his life.
Years later, King poignantly described the train ride home to Georgia. “After that summer in Connecticut, it was a bitter feeling going back to segregation,” he said. “It was hard to understand why I could ride wherever I pleased on the train from New York to Washington, and then had to change to a Jim Crow car at the nation’s capital in order to continue the trip to Atlanta.” It is easy to understand why these experiences led King to respond to the call for equality of the races. He could have stayed comfortable in the north, but he chose to go back to the South to try to bring about change. King was inspired and driven at a young age.
Leaving Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary (where he was elected president of the student body – which was composed almost entirely of white students). He then received a Ph.D. in Theology from Boston University in 1955. Here’s something ironic – King received C and C+ in two terms of public speaking, yet MLK is primarily renowned for his public speaking skills. He won a Grammy posthumously (Best Spoken Word) for his recording of a 1967 address, “Why I oppose the War in Viet Nam, and in 2012 his “I Have a Dream” speech was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
For trivia fans, a relatively unknown fact about MLK and his new wife, Coretta Scott, was that they were married in her father’s backyard in Marion, Alabama, and spent their honeymoon night in a guest room at a funeral parlor owned by a friend since no local hotel would open their doors to a black couple.
When you read about MLK’s civil disobedience, perhaps these backstories might leave you better informed as to how and why he fought those battles which eventually cost him his life.
One more bit of trivia – When a movement to pass legislation to create a day honoring MLK was presented, it was held back and objected to by President Ronald Reagan and Senator Jesse Helms and only got passed through the intervention of then Senator John F. Kennedy.