From Major J. Jones
Author: Jones, Major J.
Date: August 1, 1955 to August 31, 1955?
Location: Boston, Mass.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Family
Details
Jones describes fellow Boston University graduate Thomas J. Pugh’s guest sermon at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury. A member of the Dialectical Society and a Baptist minister, Pugh had received his Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1955.1
Dear Martin, The Wife and the One to be:
I hope by now you have gotten your mastercopy and that you have reread it after having been out of school and on the world a little while—Smile. Seriously, I do hope it got there ok. Let me know because I put a $100.00 on it just in case. Forget the $ it took to send it, I will see you some time.
Boy the “cloud” sure got here this summer. There are more of us here this year than before, and the looks are not as good. It seems as if all the looks got off in New York or some place other than this place. It is sure not here. I do not have any worry working this summer, there is nothing here to take my mind off of study.
I went to hear Dr. Pugh and it seems as if he has not become a bit better since he got his Ph.D. I was more confused about what took place between Christ and Nicodemus than ever after his sermon. Rev. Hester had him and the people were just as mad as I was confused—Smile.
The Wedding is the 28th of August in Oxford, N.C. at the Methodist Church there at 5:31. I hope that you might find the time to come, I would hope that Mrs. King could also, but the little one might be so near until I will understand if that is impossible.
Take Care, and yours,
[signed]
Major
1. Thomas Jefferson Pugh (1917–) received an A.B. from Clark College in 1940, a B.D. from Gammon Theological Seminary in 1942, and an M.A. from Atlanta University in 1947. Pugh was a public school principal and Baptist pastor in southern Georgia before joining the faculty of Atlanta’s Bryant Theological Seminary in 1944 and serving as chaplain at Albany State College from 1948 to 1958. In 1958 he joined the faculty of Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center, where he taught for the rest of his career.
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954-1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.