New book details King’s years in Delco
As the nation observed the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April, media attention largely focused on the final years of King’s life spent in the national spotlight.
One book that hit the market last month takes a different approach to understanding King, dedicated to a time in his life that to this point has been relegated to a single chapter in biographies, or to occasional examination in academic journals.
Nearly 70 years since King’s fall 1948 arrival at Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Patrick Parr’s “The Seminarian” finally provides the public with a fulllength look at his years as a seminary student from 1948 to 1951 and how they would shape his future work as a preacher and civil rights leader. The book also documents King’s personal life while in Chester and its vicinity, including the first interview granted by Betty Moitz, the white daughter of a campus cook who King courted while a student.
“Biographies jump from childhood to Montgomery (bus boycott),” said Parr, a freelance journalist and university professor who divides his time between Yokohama, Japan, and Akron, Ohio. “He’s born in segregated Atlanta, attended Morehouse College, then he’s voted to be leader of Montgomery Improvement Association.”
The process to shed light on the overlooked period of King’s life grew out of another project Parr was working on in 2012. “It was ‘Legends of 22.’ I was looking at 40 historical figures and their formative years, and one was MLK,” said Parr.
The book was to consist of 2,000 word profiles of the figure’s life at age 22. “I made this assumption that 22 is the most formative year for human beings,” said Parr. “If I’d in a library I’d say ‘I need two hours to look up people at 22. It’s one of my obsessive habits – now it’s paid off,” he said, laughing.
As he was writing the entry for King, he came to the realization that biographies didn’t have enough material on King’s life at 22 to cover the 2,000 word profile.
“I thought ‘that’s awful – we don’t know anything about him until age 27,’” said Parr. “I started to dig and I went for five years.”
Parr’s five years of research took him through sources including Crozer’s academic records, course catalogs, the archives of the Chester Times, interview transcripts from King biographer David J. Garrow, and interviewing over a dozen classmates and others who knew King during his time at the seminary.
“Parr has gone well beyond all prior scholars, and he offers what without doubt will always remain the definitive account of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life from 1948 to 1951,” writes Garrow of Parr’s research in the book’s foreword. Barrow’s “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the South Christian Leadership Conference” earn him the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in biography.
Garrow’s foreword outlines King’s draw to Crozer through the Rev. J. Pius Barbour, then-pastor of Chester’s Calvary Baptist Church. Barbour, a fellow alumnus of King’s alma mater Morehouse College in Atlanta, had been the first black graduate of Crozer. He was a friend of King’s father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., through encounters at Baptist conventions. Parr includes accounts in the book of King’s tutelage under Barbour and his paternal relationship with King.
Crozer, a theologically liberal, racially integrated seminary that invited international students, offered King new ways to intellectually interpret the teachings he learned growing up in the traditions of the Southern black church with its mix of theologically conservative and liberal ideas.
“There was what’s called the Social Gospel, which started with (American theologians) Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr,” said Parr. “The cornerstones of the Social Gospel were talking the message of Christianity and bringing it to the streets; trying to help social become better, not just economically and dayto-day, but from a moral standpoint.”
Parr also dug deeper into King’s time at University of Pennsylvania, where Crozer permitted top students to sit in on classes. King attended an Ethics and Philosophy of History course, taught by Penn Professor Elizabeth Flower, which included discussions on the nonviolent resistance of Mahatma Ghandi. Parr writes that Flower and classmates were impressed with King’s insight on nonviolence from his talks with Barbour.
Parr produces fresh research in the book on the often cited lecture by Howard University President Mordecai Johnson that King attended. Johnson had just returned from a visit from India, and Johnson’s fiery oratory motived King to delve into the works of Ghandi. Johnson, with whom would have been familiar from his time at their shared alma mater Morehouse, also inspired King with what Parr calls “the incendiary power with which Mordecai Johnson could motivate his listeners to rethink the status quo. He no fear of arguing for change in front of people who were deeply invested in the current system.”
Along with King’s theological and philosophical growth during his time at Crozer, Parr also delves into the personal side of ML, as he was then called, and how he spent his time around Chester and Upland.
“King used to sit at the Chester Creek; that was his spiritual spot,” said Parr. While writing of King’s studies at Penn, Parr outlines King’s route to the Penn campus, one shared by generations of uptown Chester and Upland residents: Taking a bus from the Crozer campus, passing Chester Rural Ceremony on the way to Edgmont Avenue, heading downtown to the train station at Sixth Street and Edgmont Avenue, today the Avenue of the States, and on to Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station by train.
Parr located a box score in the Chester Times and Philadelphia Inquirer showing the disastrous results of King’s lone foray into college basketball. King, then student body president, led his team to the court against Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (succeeded by both Palmer Theological Seminary and Eastern University in Radnor Township). The theologically conservative Eastern bested their cross-county, Social Gospel-teaching rivals 104-41. King contributed 3 points to Croz
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