The president responds to King's letter of 25 September.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
530 South Union Street
Montgomery, Alabama
PERSONAL
Dear Mr. King:
Thank you for sending me your comments regarding the necessity of the decision I had to make in the difficult Arkansas situation. I appreciated your thoughtful expression of the basic and compelling factors involved.
Question: How can the crime wave among Negroes be reduced? Shouldn’t the church take a stand on this problem?
Question: I am a deacon in the church and my wife teaches Sunday school. We were shocked recently when our youngest boy was arrested for taking part in a teen-age gang war. He is only 14, but we found he has been smoking and drinking for the last year. He has every advantage, love, spending money and a lot of friends. Where did we go wrong? What can we do to get him back on the right track?
Question: My husband and I are whites. We recently moved to California where my husband teaches in a small community. He has a very emotional Negro boy in his class. Fortunately, he likes and respects my husband. Things go smoothly when the boy and my husband agree, but if he is corrected or disciplined, he reasons that my husband doesn’t like him because he is a Negro. How can we help him? He can’t go on hating and fighting and being insecure.
In late February Popper, a freelance editor affiliated with Harper & Brothers, began assisting King with the manuscript that would become Stride Toward Freedom.1 In the letter below she explains her efforts on behalf of the press, “to convert, as it were, an expert orator’s style into a writer’s style.”
Dr. Martin Luther King
309 South Jackson Street
Montgomery, Alabama
Dear Dr. King:
Vice President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson thanks King for his support.1 Just prior to the election, King, who refrained from endorsing either ticket, had expressed his disappointment in the nomination of the Senate Democratic majority leader from Texas because of his position on civil rights.2
Rev. Martin Luther King
407 Auburn Ave.
Atlanta, Georgia
Dear Dr. King:
In this typed draft of his address, King shares his dream of a nation “where men of all races, colors, and creeds will live together as brothers” but warns that American racism has put the country’s international standing “at its lowest ebb.”1 He further recommends five ways that black people can continue “to remind America” of the dream: continue to challenge segregation, utilize the freedom blacks currently enjoy, obtain the ballot, “suffer and sacrifice” to achieve freedom, and use nonviolent method
After being asked byHarper’s Magazine to profile King, writer James Baldwin requests a meeting and raises the possibility of being “allowed to follow you about for a day or two” in order “to convey some dim approximation of what it is like to be in your position.” He added: "I am one of the millions, to be found all over the world but more especially here, in this sorely troubled country, who thank God for you.” Baldwin's essay appeared in the February 1961 issue of Harper’s.1
Telling King that “the question of where you move next is more important than any other question Negroes face today,” Rustin suggests themes for King’s speech at the Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. In his address at the Lincoln Memorial on 17 May, King adhered to Rustin’s suggestion to include strong statements on nonviolence and the importance of voting rights, but did not emphasize the pivotal role of organized labor in the civil rights struggle as Rustin urges below.1
The longtime pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church, located on Atlanta's Auburn Avenue near Ebenezer Baptist Church, praises King's “leadership, imagination, consecration and insight.” Borders, leader of Atlanta's Triple L Movement against segregated buses, also reminds King that ongoing local struggles will require attention after the Prayer Pilgrimage.1
Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
309 South Jackson Street
Montgomery, Alabama
