Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

3 “Making a Contribution”

53 3 “Making a Contribution” The Highlander Folk School seems like a wonderful place. I am looking forward with eager anticipation to attending the workshop, hoping to make a contribution to the fulfillment of complete freedom for all people. —Rosa Parks, July 6, 1955 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.1 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 sec- 54 BECOMING KING ond 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.2 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 “Making a Contribution” 55 served notice that he would insist that the congregation resist the temptation to focus inwardly. As was the case in...