File photo
From working to support himself through college starting at the age of fifteen, to experiencing heartbreak and love, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. learned many life lessons early, all of them binding together to form the unique man needed to become king among the titans of the American civil rights movement.
College bound
In the summer of 1944, before King was to start college at Morehouse, he took a train into Sismbury, Connecticut so he could afford school by working at the Cullman Brothers Tobacco farm. King took this trip with several other students also set to start at Morehouse in the fall, and it would be King’s first experience with the integrated north.
Partnering with the college, the tobacco farm put the students’ wages towards tuition, housing, and fees for the university. During the week, King and his fellow students picked tobacco from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. in temperatures often above 100 degrees. The students earned approximately $4 per day for the grueling work.
Growing up in the racially divided south, King wrote fondly of his time up north, writing back home to tell his family of how kind the white people past Washington D.C. were and that he had not felt any racism at all.
On the weekends, King and his classmates would go to town in Simsbury and enjoy milkshakes and movies. Usually on Saturdays the group would head to Hartford where they could watch live shows, shop, and eat at restaurants.
As his segregated bus trip home to Atlanta after coming in second place at a high school orator’s competition in Valdosta was never far from King’s mind, he wrote to his parents back home how impressed he was that up north he could sit anywhere he wanted.
The college man
King was only 15 -years -old when he entered Morehouse College.
Allowed in as an early-admission student, the all-black university threw open the doors of thought and knowledge to King- his young mind soaking up the philosophical concepts of social activists, theologians, and educators like a sponge.
At the time, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, was president of Morehouse.
When 18-year-old King changed his declared educational course from law and medicine in the summer of 1947, announcing he had decided to pursue a career in ministry instead, he credited Mays with being his spiritual advisor.
In the summer of 1948, as Israel was becoming an independent nation, King graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology at the age of just 19.
After Morehouse, King enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania. While at Crozer, King attended several courses at the nearby University of Pennsylvania and was also elected student body president.
King’s father supported his decision to follow in the family’s footsteps professionally, even securing a position for his young son with J. Pius Barbour who pastored at Calvery Baptist Church. Barbour was a long-time friend of the elder King and also graduated from Crozer.
While there, King became known as one of the “Son’s of Calvary,” a title he shared with two other men he would go on to become legendary pastors in their own right: William Agustus Jones and Samuel D. Proctor.
Still not done learning, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University in 1951.
Heartbreak and happy ever after
While at Crozer, King is said to have met the love of his life; a white woman named Betty Moitz.
King was in his third year at Crozer when he met Moitz, who was the daughter of a German immigrant working in the cafeteria. According to friends, King intended to marry the lovely Moitz, until, that is, word of the planned engagement reached the ears of his parents.
The elder Kings were not having it.
His father is reported to have said an interracial marriage would derail his pastoral career before it ever began, yet it was King’s mother’s opposition to the union that ultimately caused King to break off his relationship with the young woman just six months later.
King’s close friends from his time at Crozer say this was an emotional time for the young man, with many believing King was never the same again after his relationship with Moitz ended.
Feeling lonely while in Boston, King asked a friend named Mary Powell if she knew any nice Southern girls [as if there is another kind?].
A student at the New England Conservatory of Music, Powell thought about it and decided to ask fellow classmate Coretta Scott about meeting King.
Herself the daughter of a preacher, Scott immediately dismissed the idea of meeting King, telling Powell she was not interested in dating any preachers. After a little persistence and cajoling on the part of Powell, Scott eventually agreed to allow King to give her a call.
Starting with a phone call instead of a kiss, King and Scott married on June 18, 1953, in Heiberger, Alabama. The couple went on to have four children: Yolanda King (1955-2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (1961-2024), and Bernice King (b. 1963).
Early Activism
During his time in Boston, King joined a group of local ministers his age. The group held intense sessions where they discussed and debated theology and the social issues of the day. Sometimes King would guest pastor at some of the young men’s own churches, where the opportunity honed his oratory skills and sermon style.
In the summer of 1950, King was warned by a friend’s father that Mary’s Café in Maple Shade, New Jersey, did not welcome black patrons, and King was said to have responded that he might need to pay the tavern a visit.
On Sunday, June 11, 1950, King decided to do just that.
King, a classmate named Walter McCall, and their dates Doris Wilson and Pearl Smith, decided to stop in at Mary’s after church services for some beers. After taking a seat inside the public establishment, the group received no service.
After some time of waiting in silence, McCall approached the owner, a white male named Ernest Nichols, and asked for four beers to take on the road. Being Sunday, Nichols responded that he could not as he was bound by law not to sale alcohol on a Sunday.
Acknowledging the barkeep’s attention to the law, McCall next asked for four ginger ales. Nichols again refused and demanded the group leave his establishment.
When the quartette refused, Nichols grabbed a gun and fired it into the air above him. Terrified, the group ran for their lives to the nearest police station, the Maple Shade Police Department, with the full intention of reporting the harrowing incident to the authorities.
Only, once there, officers refused to file a report against the tavern owner.
Refusing to let the incident go, King and his group contacted the NAACP, who helped them file a police report. Nichols would end up being charged with disorderly conduct and with violation of the anti-discrimination law. Found guilty and fined $50, Nichols ultimately beat the racial discrimination count, which was later dismissed. A New Jersey 1945 anti-discrimination law guarantees non-discrimination by race in public accommodations.
It would be King’s first lawsuit filed against discrimination.
The incident, which became known as the Mary’s Café sit-in, proved to King in real time the power of peaceful resistance.