From Herschelle Sullivan
Author: Sullivan, Herschelle
Date: December 16, 1961
Genre: Letter
Topic: Albany Movement
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Arrests
Student movements
Details
Sullivan, a former Spelman student arrested with King in October 1960, sends a jocular note updating King on her studies at Johns Hopkins University.1 She offers encouragement to King, who was arrested in Albany on 16 December while leading a prayer demonstration: “My thoughts and prayers are dominated by concern for you and the other Americans who are being punished for exercising their constitutional rights.”
Dear Rev. King,
Recent radio and television reports lead me to believe that you are still “an Arrogant Negra”. Needless to say I am overjoyed.
I feel so left out of things here. During the Thanksgiving vacation I had hoped to chat with you if only for a moment.
Johns Hopkins is without questionnone of the most stimulating schools I’ve attended.2 They work the.… with all due respects to the ecclesiastical order.… devil out of you, but somehow you don’t mind. The students by and large come from Ivy league schools and many have expressed an interest at least from a sociological point of view in the advent of the “New Negro”.3 This is especially true of the other students majoring in the African area who are searching in the American Negro some correlation with the so called “African Personality”, and some identification with Senghor’s ideas of Negritude.4 Being the one of the two Negroes here (out of an enrollment of about 100, only 10 of which are girls) who had participated in the sit-ins, they come to me occasionally with questions.
My roommate, a white student from California, is one such student. Many hours have been spent in examing the entire problem. It has been a good experience for me to defend my point of view to really sharp students arguing from an academic rather than an emotional point of view. One night we stayed up until 4:00a.m. planning an armed invasion of Mississippi. (smiles) I remember the night she and I went out with some graduate students from Howard. It was her first date with a Negro and she was rather apprehensive fearing that he would not like her, and would be disappointed that she was white (it was a blind date), so I hastily reminded her that all Negro men wanted to marry white women, putting her at ease.
Although the conditions there cannot possibly equal the luxury of the “Fulton Bars”, I hope you are resonably comfortable and that your diet is not limited to corn bread and buttermilk.5 It is after 2:30a.m. so I must close. I want you to know that my thoughts and prayers are dominated by concern for you and the other Americans who are being punished for exercising their constitutional rights. It is, however, a relief to know your are there to give the spiritual guidance and moral strength that those who perhaps have been arrested for the first time may need.
Sincerely,
Herschelle
P.S. Sorry you had to put up with my poor typing, but I could not find my pen
1. King, Sullivan, and several others were arrested on 19 October 1960 for participating in a sit-in at Rich’s department store in Atlanta. For more on their arrest, see King to Female Inmates, in Papers 5:527–528. Herschelle Sullivan Challenor (1938– ), born in Atlanta, attended nearby Spelman College, where she was elected student body president. In 1960, Sullivan became involved in the Atlanta student movement. Following her graduation from Spelman in 1961, Sullivan pursued graduate studies in international relations, receiving an M.A. from Johns Hopkins (1963) and a Ph.D. from Columbia University (1970). Later Sullivan held several academic positions, including the directorship of the Washington Liaison Office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In 1994, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the National Security Education Board.
2. In a 9 March 1962 letter, King encouraged Sullivan’s graduate studies, writing that her “experience at Johns Hopkins will broaden your insights and extend your intellectual horizon.”
3. Sullivan may refer to Alain Locke’s groundbreaking essay “The New Negro” (The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke [New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925]).
4. Léopold Sédar Senghor was the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). A critic of colonization and western assimilation, he promoted Negritude, a literary movement that emphasized the inherent value of African culture.
5. Sullivan refers to the Fulton County Jail.
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.