From Gardner C. Taylor
Author: Taylor, Gardner C.
Date: July 7, 1961
Location: New York, N.Y.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Freedom Rides
Details
In the following letter, Taylor, pastor of Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, requests that King join him and seventeen others on a Freedom Ride to Jackson, Mississippi.1 King’s secretary Dora McDonald responded that King was out of town.2 The proposed ride did not occur.
Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
407 Auburn Avenue, N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia
My dear Dr. King:
I believe that all men of honor and of belief in a democratic America look with gratitude upon the courage and moral strength of the hundreds of young student Freedom-Riders, white and Negro, who are confronting the nation with the option of fulfilling its democratic pledges.
I believe that the hour has struck when we who love this nation must spare nothing to cleanse it of the stain of segregation. Therefore, I am writing to you and 17 other outstanding Americans, asking that we join in a Freedom Ride to the Jackson, Mississippi Airport or Bus Station. I believe that the enormous prestige of your name, along with the others whose names I attach, will give to this effort the dramatic impact which may well set the nation firmly on a program of integration of public facilities. We can proceed with details as soon as we have agreed on the wisdom of the suggestion. I trust that I may have favorable and early reply.
Yours Sincerely,
[signed]
Gardner Taylor
GT: wll
Encl.
1. In a 6 June 1961 letter to J. Raymond Henderson, King stated that he had discussed the idea of a minister-led Freedom Ride with several people and “everyone agrees that this is a tremendous idea and should be done” (p. 246 in this volume). Among those invited were: John F. Kennedy, Adam Clayton Powell, A. Philip Randolph, John H. Johnson, Roy Wilkins, Ralph Abernathy, Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits, Francis Cardinal Spellman, George Meany, Walter Reuther, Bishop James Pike, C. Stanton Gallup, Henry Luce, James Farmer, and Benjamin Mays.
2. McDonald to Taylor, 10 July 1961.
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.