From Harold Edward Pinkston
Author: Pinkston, Harold Edward (Virginia Union University)
Date: October 4, 1954
Location: Richmond, Va.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Career in Ministry
Details
Pinkston, a student at Virginia Union University in Richmond, writes to his former Boston roommate and Alpha Phi Alpha brother about their mutual friends in the Boston area. Prior to entering Virginia Union in the fall of 1952, Pinkston was assistant pastor along with King of the Reverend William H. Hester’s Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts.1 In 1937 the Reverend L. A. Pinkston, Harold Edward Pinkston’s cousin, had defeated King, Sr., in a bid for the presidency of the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia. The two remained close friends during Pinkston’s long tenure as president, traveling together as delegates to the National Baptist Convention. The elder Pinkston served on King, Jr.’s ordination council in 1948.
Dear Brother King,
Greetings to you from Union, all the boys, and your admirer as well as “potentate brother of the Cloth.” I trust that you have been well and all has been well with you and Mrs. King.
Say King, my main objective is this: During the summer just leaving, or rather just before, I have lost contact with Miss Rosetta Moore’s address and I really would like very much to have it. Can you help me? I believe she has finished Harvard now and I don’t know whether she has gone “home” (to Florida which address I don’t know) or New Orleans to teach, or returned to Dillard Univ. to work in the seminars there.
If you can locate it for me Brother, I shall greatly appreciate your kindness. I’ll await your response as soon as you can reply.
How are your studies coming, have you completed them as yet? What about Bob. Carter, I send my best regards to him and “Niel” Range. Best wishes also to Rev. Hester and Mrs and Mr. Johnson on Shawmut Ave.
Oh yes, I might add—Upon my completion of my college work in Feb. I plan to enter seminary either in Los Angeles, Calif., or Colgate-Rochester in Rochester, N.Y.
So-long Brother, I await “the good news” from you.
Fraternally yours, in Christ & AΦA
[signed] H. E. Pinkston
1. Harold Edward Pinkston (1931–) received the B.A. and M.Div. degrees from Virginia Union in 1954 and 1957, respectively; the M.A. from Connecticut’s Wesleyan University in 1969; the Ph.D. from Temple University in 1971; and the Th.D. from Indiana’s Trinity Theological Seminary in 1979. He was pastor of Baptist churches in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York before becoming pastor in 1976 of the Good Shepherd Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio. Since 1970 he has been professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University. Pinkston also served as vice-president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Virginia affiliate. See Harold Edward Pinkston to King Papers Project, 8 March 1992.
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.