To David Johnson

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: January 9, 1962

Location: Atlanta, Ga.?

Genre: Letter

Topic: Student movements

Details

King gives Johnson, a senior at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie, Indiana, suggestions for leading an integration campaign on his campus.¹ King recommends contacting the local press and encourages Johnson’s efforts: “Committed persons, like yourself, are making a definite contribution to the moral strength of our nation when you concern yourself with such matters.”²

Mr. David Johnson
307 N. Tillotson
Muncie, Indiana

Dear Mr. Johnson:

I am very pleased that you feel concerned about the complete integration of your campus to the extent that you want to take some positive steps toward accomplish­ing this end. Negro students suffer severe psychological damage in such a partially integrated set-up. These campuses are the source of much of the racial bitterness which is growing in the young intellectual class. Committed persons, like yourself, are making a definite contribution to the moral strength of our nation when you concern yourself with such matters.

Your course of action seems to be quite sound. It was right and proper that you consult the campus officials first.³ I think a second course of action might be to document the situation as to exactly how many Negro students are there, how many have tried to secure residence at certain places, etc. You might then contact the press of Muncie. A particularly crusading journalist might accomplish more than demonstra­tions, for he is able to bring this particular injustice before the public eye in such a way that the conscience of the community might be quickened to action.⁴

The Negro students themselves must be ready to take some action also. Southern Negro and white students have been quite effective in dramatically protesting the inequities of this partial democracy.

You might also write to The Rev. William Coffin, Chaplain, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. They have done a splendid job at Yale in this respect.⁵ He will certainly be able to give you some advice concerning desegregation of college communities.

Very truly yours,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Km

^1. Johnson wrote to King seeking advice on how to challenge local segregation practices (Johnson to King, 22 November 1961). While Ball State was officially desegregated, black students who lived off-campus could only live in the black section of Muncie six to twelve miles away from campus. In spring 1961, Johnson met with veterans of the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins, and organized an interra­cial student group, which put pressure on local restaurants to change their unofficial policy of barring black students unaccompanied by white friends (David Johnson, Interview by King Papers Project staff, 20 February 2009). David Wolcott Johnson (1940– ), grew up near Muncie, Indiana, and attended Ball State Teachers College from 1958–1962. Johnson had met King while working as a student staff member at the American Baptist Assembly in the summer of 1959. Johnson was one of two recipients of the 1962 Russell Bull Scholarship, awarded by the United Packinghouse Workers of America to college students for their civil rights work. After graduating with a B.S. in English, Johnson earned an M.A. (1964) and Ed.D. (1966) in social psychology from Columbia University and was involved with SNCC, teaching black history at a freedom school in Harlem and assisting with preparations for the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project.

^2. By the time King responded, the administration and local restaurants had already complied with the student group’s demands (Johnson, Interview by KPP staff).

^3. Johnson described the Ball State administration as willing to work on integration, but were “extremely anxious not to have the slightest conflict with the community.” The administration main­tained separate housing lists based on race because it insisted that students did not desire to live in integrated conditions. The student group refuted the administration’s claim by finding white families willing to house black students and students willing to have a black roommate (Johnson, Interview by KPP staff).

^4. As past editor of the Ball State News, the school newspaper, Johnson had ready access to the campus press. The student group threatened both negative press coverage and demonstrations to compel campus administration to integrate (Johnson, Interview by KPP staff).

^5. William Sloane Coffin was the chaplain of Yale University from 1958 to 1975. Yale was among the first Ivy League schools to alter their admission standards in respect to race. During the 1961–1962 school year, the university began recruiting academically qualified black students from specific high schools.

Source: SCLCR-GAMK, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Records, 1954–1970, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.