Martin Luther King and the Decision That Would Shape History

Historians and sociologists have much to say about the importance of place and time and ideas.  The ways in which those three elements converge, shape the course of history and the development and progress of social movements.  A fourth element, dynamic personal leadership. is often the catalyst that sets change in motion.  


Martin Luther King, Jr certainly shaped the course of American history and his impact was determined by the intersection of Place, Time, Ideas and Leadership. 


 The optimism and idealism of the Social Gospel Movement of the late 19th century and early 20th century had given way to the realism of war, poverty, and oppression in the years following World War I and the Great Depression.  Poverty, Racial injustice and oppression continued in the South through the Word War II era.   The ideals  of Christianity serving as an agent of change and hope remained but were severely dampened by the reality of the social situation in the South.
 
Martin Luther King, Jr had received his education "up north".  He graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in  1948 and completed his doctoral studies at Boston University's School of Theology a few years later. King faced a monumental decision about whether or not to return to the South.  He had seen firsthand the racial strife and oppression during his childhood and undergraduate years and several  job offers outside of the South were tempting to King and his new wife, Coretta Scott.


The ideas of social justice and social reform had been planted in King from his childhood.  These had been watered with the theology of the Social Gospel he'd read during his graduate school studies.  The time was ripe for change to come.  Battles over segregation were coming to a head.   The question of place as it pertained to Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King remained unanswered.  Could they be most effective by remaining in the north; educating others, preaching the gospel, writing about the imperative of social change from a Christian perspective; or should they return to the South and become active agents for change on the front lines.


Their decision would shape the course of American history.

The decision faced by the Kings was similar to decisions we all face in our own lives.  One wonders if the Kings may have asked themselves the question that Charles M Sheldon asked in his book, In His Steps, published 60 years earlier.   The question, What Would Jesus Do? was the central premise of Sheldon's book and that question helped shape the Social Gospel movement which changed the way Americans viewed the gospel of Christ as it relates to modern day social problems. 

What Would Jesus Do? 

• Would he return to racism of the southern states or would he remain where it was safe, secure and financially rewarding?   
• Would he risk raising a family amidst hate and violence? 
• Would he risk his own life for principles he believed in?   
• Would he take direct action to affect change or simply remain on the sidelines as a cheerleader, urging others to act, urging others to take risks, urging others to live out the gospel?

Excerpt From:

 The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. 
Clayborne Carson, ed
 (New York: Warner Books, 1998). 

January 1954

After being in school twenty-one years without a break, I reached the satisfying moment of completing the residential requirements for the Ph.D. degree. The major job that remained was to write my doctoral thesis. In the meantime I felt that it would be wise to start considering a job. I was not sure what area of the ministry I wanted to settle down in. I had had a great deal of satisfaction in the pastorate and had almost come to the point of feeling that I could best render my service in this area. I never could quite get the idea out of my mind that I should do some teaching, yet I felt a great deal of satisfaction with the pastorate.
Two churches in the East-one in Massachusetts and one in New York-had expressed an interest in calling me. Three colleges had offered attractive and challenging posts-one a teaching post, one a deanship, and the other an administrative position. In the midst of thinking about each of these positions, I received a letter from the officers of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery Alabama, saying that they were without a pastor and that they would be glad to have me preach when I was again in that section of the country. 


At this time I was torn in two directions. On the one hand I was inclined toward the pastorate; on the other hand, toward educational work. Which way should I go? And if I accepted a church, should it be one in the South, with all the tragic implications of segregation, or one of the two available pulpits in the North? Now, I thought, as the plane carried me toward Detroit, I had a chance to escape from the long night of segregation. Could I return to a society that condoned a system I had abhorred since childhood?
These questions were still unanswered when I returned to Boston. I discussed them with my wife, Coretta (we had been married less than a year), to find that she too was hesitant about returning south. We discussed the all-important question of raising children in the bonds of segregation. We reviewed our own growth in the South, and the many advantages that we had been deprived of as a result of segregation. The question of my wife's musical career came up. She was certain that a Northern city would afford a greater opportunity for continued study than any city in the deep South. For several days we talked and thought and prayed over each of these matters.
Finally we agreed that, in spite of the disadvantages and inevitable sacrifices, our greatest service could be rendered in our native South. We came to the conclusion that we had something of a moral obligation to return-at least for a few years.


The South, after all, was our home. Despite its shortcomings, we had a real desire to do something about the problems that we had felt so keenly as youngsters. We never wanted to be considered detached spectators. 

Since racial discrimination was most intense in the South, we felt that some of the Negroes who had received a portion of their training in other sections of the country should return to share their broader contacts and educational experience. Moreover, despite having to sacrifice much of the cultural life we loved, despite the existence of Jim Crow, which kept reminding us at all times of the color of our skin, we had the feeling that something remarkable was unfolding in the South, and we wanted to be on hand to witness it.

Exceprt from Martin Luther King’s First Sermon in his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama.

It is a significant fact that I come to the pastorate of Dexter at a most crucial hour of our world's history; at a time when the flame of war might arise at any time to redden the skies of our dark and dreary world; at a time when men know all too well that without the proper guidance the whole of civilization can be plunged across the abyss of destruction; at a time when men are experiencing in all realms of life disruption and conflict, self destruction, and meaningless despair and anxiety. Today men who were but yesterday ridiculing the Church of Christ are now asking the Church the way to the paradise of peace and happiness. We must somehow give our generation an answer. ….I come to you with nothing so special to offer. I have no pretense to being a great preacher or even a profound scholar. I certainly have no pretense to infallibility-that is reserved for the height of the Divine, rather than the depth of the human. At every moment, I am conscious of my finiteness, knowing so clearly that I have never been bathed in the sunshine of omniscience or baptized in the waters of omnipotence. I come to you with only the claim of being a servant of Christ, and a feeling of dependence on his grace for my leadership. I come with a feeling that I have been called to preach and to lead God's people. I have felt like Jeremiah, "The word of God is in my heart like burning fire shut up in my bones." I have felt with Amos that when God speaks who can but prophesy? I have felt with Jesus that the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and to set at liberty those that are bruised.

The church work was stimulating from the beginning. The first few weeks of the autumn of 1954 were spent formulating a program that would be meaningful to this particular congregation……. The first months were busy with the usual chores of getting to know a new house, a new job, a new city. There were old friendships to pick up and new ones to be made, and little time to look beyond our private lives to the general community around us…………I took an active part in current social problems. I insisted that every church member become a registered voter and a member of the NAACP and organized within the church a social and political action committee-designed to keep the congregation intelligently informed on the social, political, and economic situations. The duties of the Social and Political Action Committee were, among others, to keep before the congregation the importance of the NAACP and the necessity of being registered voters, and-during state and national elections-to sponsor forums and mass meetings to discuss the major issues. Two members of the Social and Political Action Committee - Jo Ann Robinson and Rufus Lewis - were among the first people to become prominent in the bus boycott that was soon to mobilize the latent strength of Montgomery's Negro community.
 I joined the local branch of the NAACP and began to take an active interest in implementing its program in the community itself. By attending most of the monthly meetings I was brought face-to-face with some of the racial problems that plagued the community, especially those involving the courts.
Around the time that I started working with the NAACP, the Alabama Council on Human Relations also caught my attention. This interracial group was concerned with human relations in Alabama and employed educational methods to achieve its purpose. It sought to attain, through research and action, equal opportunity for all the people of Alabama. After working with the Council for a few months, I was elected to the office of vice-president. Although the Council never had a large membership, it played an important role. As the only truly interracial group in Montgomery, it served to keep the desperately needed channels of communication open between the races.
I was surprised to learn that many people found my dual interest in the NAACP and the Council inconsistent. Many Negroes felt that integration could come only through legislation and court action the chief emphases of the NAACP. Many white people felt that integration could come only through education-the chief emphasis of the Council on Human Relations. How could one give his allegiance to two organizations whose approaches and methods seemed so diametrically opposed?
This question betrayed an assumption that there was only one approach to the solution of the race problem. On the contrary, I felt that both approaches were necessary. Through education we seek to change attitudes and internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to regulate behavior. Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer.


A year after returning to the south to take over the pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama, the Montgomery Bus Boycott would help propel the civil rights story to the forefront of the national consciousness.    The boycott proved how members of a black community could unite in resistance to segregation, and it heralded a new era of "direct action." Martin Luther King Jr became the defacto leader of the movement and was cast into a national spotlight he hadn't sought.    

The convergence of 

Place, Time, Ideas, and dynamic Leadership 

was about to change history.

From the mid 1950s through the  1960s, Montgomery, Alabama was the epicenter of the civil rights movement that changed America. 

Montgomery was 

• where a seamstress named Rosa Parks declined to surrender her seat on a bus in 1955, triggering a year-long bus boycott and, essentially, the modern civil rights movement itself;
  
• where the house of Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church  from 1954-1960, was bombed in 1956;
  
• where Freedom Riders were assaulted and required federal protection from further attacks at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church  in 1961.
  
• Montgomery was where John Lewis was intending to march peacefully from Selma in support of voting rights when he was knocked unconscious by law enforcement officials in 1965;
  
• where King, Abernathy, Lewis and other prominent leaders later successfully did march from Selma;
  
• and from where civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was traveling back to Selma from the march when she was assassinated.

The decision of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King to  return to the South and live out the social implications of the gospel of Jesus changed history and their lives, work, and writings continue to inspire others to take positive action in response the words and actions of Jesus.