King: A Life

Coretta did in fact have concerns about becoming a preacher’s wife, and her first visit to Atlanta was discouraging, as King’s father disapproved and King left her alone to pursue another girlfriend. Even so, King was firm in his desire to marry Coretta, and his father ultimately relented. Coretta accepted the proposal, later suggesting that “he was ambitious, intelligent, and exciting. He oozed charm. He shared her passion for the pursuit of justice. She hinted at something elemental, too, referring to him repeatedly as manly, or all man, or a he-man” (105). He in turn saw her as “a quintessential African-American […] born a cornflower and destined to become a steel magnolia” in the words of Maya Angelou (106).

King and Coretta married on June 18, 1953, spending their wedding night at a funeral parlor since no hotel would accept them. The next day, King preached at the church. They settled into Boston at a time when women were expected to serve a primarily domestic role and traditional gender roles were even more entrenched than in the past. King wrote his doctoral dissertation comparing the works of theologians Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. Later analysis found considerable plagiarism, but he suffered no academic penalty for it (it was not discovered until decades after his death), and he did learn important lessons from these sources, particularly on the nature of courage as the “acceptance of anxiety—the anxiety that comes with guilt, condemnation, and death. That courage means staying connected to God when one loses faith. ‘But doubt is not the opposite of faith,’ Tillich wrote, ‘it is one element of faith’” (111).

 As his studies in Boston came to an end, King received offers from several churches to become pastor, along with the chance of joining his father at Ebenezer. Although Coretta preferred to stay in the North, Martin chose to return to the South. The NAACP’s legal challenge to segregation in public schools was sharpening the challenge to Jim Crow across the South, and it was in this atmosphere that King auditioned for a preacher’s role at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the original capital of the Confederacy. In Montgomery, King met Ralph Abernathy, a fellow preacher similarly eager to use the pulpit to address the plight of Black Americans. The two became fast friends and their connection would soon prove invaluable to the burgeoning civil rights movement.

King’s trial sermon was well received and he accepted the position as pastor just as the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling striking down segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The decision was met with resistance across the South, turning the nation’s attention to the question of whether Jim Crow could survive its greatest legal and political challenge yet.

The Kings moved to Montgomery in August 1954, finding it thoroughly segregated compared to Boston or even Atlanta. Montgomery in 1954 was indicative of a time in America when relative social tranquility was purchased at the cost of suppressing the voices of the oppressed. While Black leaders fought hard for their communities, everyday life in Montgomery was riddled with small cruelties and indignities meant to marginalize and degrade. Shortly after Brown, local professor and activist Jo Ann Robinson suggested that a boycott of Montgomery’s segregated bus system could cripple its operations and force a change. Waiting for an event that could trigger a mass public outcry, they eventually found it with Rosa Parks, a secretary for the local NAACP who seemed to have the requisite determination to withstand arrest and other harsh treatment for refusing to give up her seat.

After a year at Dexter Avenue, King had not directly involved himself in the issue of bus segregation but had worked with the NAACP. He earned his doctorate in June 1955, and in August of that same year, 14-year-old Emmett Till was savagely murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Drew, Mississippi. His mother insisted on holding an open-casket funeral, and the grisly images shocked the world. In November 1955, the Kings welcomed their first child, Yolanda, and only two weeks later, the civil rights movement began with the arrest of Rosa Parks for not giving up her seat on a city bus. Robinson organized a boycott at her local church and suggested that other local pastors lend their support.

King was considering participation in the bus boycott when Ralph Abernathy asked him to join, and he accepted. He did have doubts—“was it wrong to cause problems for the bus company to solve problems for Black riders? Was it the Christian thing to do?” (140)—but he “decided that the practical effect of the boycott was to stop participating in an ‘evil system.’” (140). On Monday, December 5, the boycott began, and far surpassed its expectations. Later that day, Parks was found guilty and charged $10, and King was appointed head of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), effectively leading the boycott. That evening, King went to the Holt Street church to deliver the “‘most decisive’ speech of his life” (144), before a crowd of thousands. Working without notes, he defended the boycott as a fulfillment of American values such as democracy and equality, along with Christian principles of human dignity and love for one’s fellow human. The speech was electrifying, and henceforth Martin Luther King Jr. would be a public figure.

King and other MIA leaders met with city officials to clarify their demands, but made little headway. White pastors also chastised King for mixing politics with the pulpit. The bus boycott became a stand-in for the entire system of segregation, and the system fought back with the full weight of local law as well as extralegal violence. MIA effectively mobilized support for the boycott, and “walking to and from work became a daily display of pride, an expression of freedom” (150). Police and city officials cracked down in every way possible, but King’s leadership proved vital for both organizing and messaging. At the heart of his message was that “undeserved suffering was redemptive” (153). Still, the city held firm, the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils surged in membership, and the mayor ordered the police to harass anyone visibly boycotting the bus system. King himself was arrested for the first time, ostensibly for speeding. The King home faced constant harassment and threats of violence, and in a moment of doubt, King said that God spoke to him and he henceforth resolved “he would die if he had to […] but he would not turn back” (157). His early life had been calm, but had lacked a profound connection with God and sense of divinely inspired purpose. Now, in the midst of social turmoil and personal danger, he found what he had been missing.

On January 30, 1956, an explosion rocked the Kings’ front porch, harming no one. Addressing a crowd outside the home, King said: “I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them” (160). Coretta insisted on staying at the house with their young daughter, demonstrating that she was no less courageous than her husband. When still more violence erupted, MIA decided not to negotiate with an establishment that was at least tolerant of such actions, if not actively supportive. While the FBI refused to investigate the bombing of King’s home, King proved popular with an increasingly national pool of journalists. In late February 1956, a grand jury indicted King and others on an obscure statute of conspiring to hinder a lawful business. He turned himself in, and the mug shot burnished his celebrity even more.

Bayard Rustin, a veteran of several nonviolent protests, arrived in Montgomery to help make the boycott a truly national movement. Rustin ghost-wrote articles for King and placed greater emphasis on following the pacifistic example of Mohandas Gandhi, although Rustin shied away from a public role because he was openly gay and that could be used to smear the movement. Rustin led workshops for how to maintain nonviolence in the face of hostility, and King built connections with other civil rights leaders, even the NAACP national office, which he typically regarded as overly cautious. King reached out to the singer Harry Belafonte, who helped organize support among other celebrities. King’s presence on television countered a host of ugly stereotypes of Black people, and his example inspired other pastors to follow him. Although the boycott incurred many costs—both Parks and her husband lost their jobs—the NAACP helped lead a successful legal challenge to the segregation of intrastate public transit. The Supreme Court refused to reconsider the lower court’s decision, and the Montgomery bus boycott ended in a clear (and rare) victory for the protestors. Shortly over a year after Parks’s arrest, King, Abernathy, and others boarded a bus and, with cameras flashing, sat in the front.