Atlanta: Formative Influences in Martin's Early Years

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929 at home (501 Auburn, Ave., Atlanta, Ga.) to Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King, the 2nd of their three children. Today we toured his birth home, seeing where he studied, learned reluctantly how to play the piano, ate family meals, slept in a single bed with his young brother, A.D., and played baseball and board games like Monopoly.

Down the street two blocks, which we also toured, is Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father was pastor and he grew up in the Christian faith. It is also the last church he served as a pastor, along with his father, and where his funeral took place. Yes, Atlanta does bring you full circle, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. 

This is the pulpit from which both Martin and his father preached.

The neighborhood Martin grew up in was the Sweet Auburn neighborhood, just east of downtown. It was one of the areas blacks went to after experiencing the segregation of Atlanta, and built their own world. It was filled with all kinds of businesses and many professional folks. Martin could look out his window to the left and see what we call poor row houses. They called them shotgun houses, because if you opened the front door and the back door and shot a shotgun, it would go straight through without touching anything. To the right he would see the affluent houses of successful black entertainers, lawyers, doctors, etc. He grew up middle class, but surrounded by those poorer and richer than himself economically. And he was around many black men like his Father who hated the segregated world of Atlanta, and refused to give in to it. If his Father wasn't served by a white merchant, he would simply leave rather than suffer further humiliation. Martin tells of two childhood experiences that had a profound impact on him: the time his father took him go get shoes and they sat at the front of the store to get fitted. When the proprietor said they had to move to the back of the store, Daddy King, as Martin called him, left the store instead. The other experience had to do with a white boy who was a great playmate from ages 3 to 6, until the white boy's father told Martin he didn't want him hanging around his son anymore.

Of those early years, Martin writes: Of course I was religious. I grew up in the church. My father is a preacher, my grandfather was a preacher, my great-grandfather was a preacher, my only brother is a preacher, my daddy's brother is a preacher. So I didn't have much choice.

When Martin was 15 he went to work on a tobacco farm in Connecticut. He wrote back to his parents. After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit any where we want to.

The following fall he entered Morehouse College, an historically black school on the west side of downtown Atlanta, 4 1/2 miles form his home. There he encountered more progressive theology which challenged some of the fundamentalist theology on which he had been raised. This was inspiring and enlightening to Martin. It was in his final year there he finally felt the call to ministry: My call to ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.

After touring King's birth home, the church and the wonderful museum dedicated to him across the street from the church, Mary and I decided to drive over to Morehouse. When we came to the campus gate, and asked if we could see the campus, the guard let us in and told us where to go. As we starting trudging up the hill to one of the highest points in Atlanta, where the first Morehouse building was constructed in 1879, a security guard offered to put us in his golf cart and give us a tour. He took us up to that first building, called Graves Hall, which was the dormitory that Martin lived in.  He also got us into the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel, constructed in 1978.

Martin would go from Morehouse to Crozer Seminary in Chester, Pa., and then to Boston University to work on his Ph.D. There he would meet Coretta Scott, whom he would marry one June 18, 1954 Of her he wrote: I am indebted to my wife, Coretta, without whose love, sacrifices, and loyalty neither life nor work would bring fulfillment. She has given me words of consolation when I needed them and a well-ordered home where Christian love is a reality.

Picture from the Museum Above 

Martin received his doctorate in systematic theology in June of 1955. It was time for his first call. Both Coretta's parents and his parents wanted him to remain in the North. But he was determined to return to the South. Against his father's wishes, he took the call as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Al.

Mary and I head in that direction tomorrow.

Much of the material in this and upcoming blogs comes from two wonderful books I have been reading:  Clayborne Carson, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.: New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1998 and David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross:  Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: New York: HarperCollings, 1986.