King: A Biography

2. The Philosopher King

2 The Philosopher King The championship of social justice is almost the only way left open to a Christian nowadays to gain the crown of martyrdom. VVALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH CHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA, THE SITE of Crozer Theological Seminary, is an industrial city with a population of about 66,000. It was here that William Penn and his followers first set foot on the real estate that a debt-ridden British sovereign had granted to his worrisome Quaker subjects. Little of the original spirit of brotherly love remained at the time that Mike King was a student there. A highly conservative plutocracy ruled the city, through bosses. Large parts of Chester, the better parts, were off limits to the black population, which subsisted in unpicturesque squalor in the western section of town. For the most part, the black students at Crozer confined their social activity to Edwards Street, where there was a combination drugstore and soda fountain run by a friendly and industrious black family. This street was further endeared to Mike, because a classmate had an aunt who lived there and prepared the collard greens that both of them relished. Around the corner, on Sixteenth Street, was the imposing brick church and parsonage of J. Pius Barbour. The menu of the Barbour household reflected the affluence of its master's profession. Mike especially enjoyed Mrs. Barbour's steak bathed in spicy sauce. 27 King "He could eat more than any little man you ever saw in your life," his former host comments. This must have been true, for Mike once confessed that "eating is my great sin." The diversions of Edwards Street and the Southern warmth of the Barbour home did much to compensate for the general coldness and subtle bigotry of Chester and Crozer. L. Harold DeWolf, his dissertation supervisor at Boston University, contends that Mike exhibited no symptoms of racial malaise during their close relationship. \Vhen they happened to discuss his apparent racial equableness several years later, Mike remarked that his parents' lectures on this subject had equipped him with a sturdy armor against prejudice . In the fall of 1948, however, he had not yet achieved this state of imperturbability. Racial stereotypes beset him on all sides. He resolved not to be too friendly, not to smile when greeting classmates. He must not be thought to be a "happygo -lucky darky." Seriousness, personal neatness, and punctuality were the desiderata of the moment: I was well aware of the typical white stereotype of the Negro, that he is always late, that he's loud and always laughing, that he's dirty and messy, and for a while I was terribly conscious of trying to avoid identification with it. If I were a minute late to class, I was almost morbidly conscious of it and sure that everyone else noticed it. Rather than be thought of as always laughing , I'm afraid I was grimly serious for a time. He dressed impeccably, brushed his short hair mercilessly, and studied unrelentingly. He was, of course, too intelligent, too sensitive and superior, to spend his youth fighting vulgar stereotypes. Moreover, he possessed a proud family heritage and a most adequate monthly allowance, which made such dour conduct abnormal. Nonetheless, the initial behavioral pattern adopted at Crozer never entirely vanished in later years when he was in the presence of whites. One of his Crozer professors, Kenneth Lee Smith, who knew him well, always believed Mike to be reserved and humorless. The Philosopher King Reverend Hal Carter of Montgomery, whom Mike encouraged to enroll at Crozer, states that Mike thought of the three years in Chester as even more rewarding than his stay at Boston University. Dr. Sankey L. Blanton, president of Crozer, frequently invited Mike to his home and, while Mrs. Blanton endeavored to satiate a boundless appetite, Dr. Blanton and his student discoursed animatedly about the theologians and philosophers whose views at that time excited Mike. In his New Testament course, Professor Morton Scott Enslin also provided salutary direction through the morass of problems beleaguring Mike. But it was Professors George W. Davis and Kenneth Lee Smith who were of greatest assistance to him. In Professor Davis' course on the psychology of religious personalities, Mike first encount-ered a detailed analysis of Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. Under the guidance of Professor Smith, he renewed his acquaintance with the works of Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Paul Tillich. Through both professors...