"Other Mountains," Baccalaureate Sermon at Alabama State College

Delivered at Alabama State College for baccalaureate sermon on May 15, 1955¹

1. Rugged Individualism and national isolationalism
2. the mountain of meadiocrity in our various fields of endeavor
3. The mountain of hate and bitteress²

^1. In a 2 May 1955 letter, Alabama State College president H. Councill Trenholm invited King to serve as the baccalaureate minister for the college's May commencement (in Papers 2:550-551) and also asked Martin and Coretta King to be dinner guests at his home prior to the ceremony. The day after the event, King's father boasted in a letter to J. Raymond Henderson, “They tell me he swept. He is already in great demand” (in Papers 2:556-557).

^2. In his 1960 Founder's Day address at Atlanta's Spelman College, King spoke of four symbolic mountains that must be surmounted “if civilization is to survive.” He described “the mountain of hatred and violence” that could be overcome with the use of “nonviolent resistance” and “the love ethic of Jesus Christ” (King, “Keep Moving from This Mountain,” Address at Spelman College on 10 April 1960, in Papers 5:411-417).