Martin Luther King, Jr. - Travels
Pinkston, a divinity student at Virginia Union, had known King during the early 1950s while both assisted Rev. William H. Hester at Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church. He offers to transport King from the Richmond airport to Rev. Wyatt “Tee” Walker’s home in Petersburg, Virginia, where King would stay before giving a speech to the Virginia state NAACP convention on 5 October. W. Lester Banks, the executive secretary of the state NAACP, thanked King on 8 November for his participation.
Hello “Mike,”
King thanks the Los Angeles minister and his wife, Velva Henderson, for their hospitality and anticipates their next meeting in Denver at the National Baptist Convention's annual conference in September.
The Rev. J. Raymond Henderson, Minister
Second Baptist Church
Griffith Avenue and 24th Street
Los Angeles 11, California
Dear Rev. Henderson:
King accepts the annual Social Justice Award from the National Religion and Labor Foundation, sharing the award with Senator Herbert H. Lehman of New York and Father John La Farge. Previous recipients included Thurgood Marshall, George Meany, Walter Reuther, and Eleanor Roosevelt. King received the award on 24 April 1957 in New York.
Dr. Clair M. Cook, Executive Director1
National Religion and Labor Foundation
3494 1/2 North High Street
Columbus 2, Ohio
King thanks Lomax for her newspaper articles on Montgomery and the hospitality that she and her mother-in-law, Minnie Lomax, had shown during the Kings’ visit to Los Angeles.
King turns down an invitation to speak at the annual conference of the National Committee for Rural Schools on 17 November. Brandstein, the organization's executive secretary, rescheduled the conference for 15 December to accommodate King, who accepted the revised invitation on 20 August.
King thanks Lawrence and the Greater New York Committee for a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving for organizing the 17 May service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, at which King delivered the sermon.1
The Rev. George Lawrence, Minister of Education
Friendship Baptist Church
144 West 131st Street
New York 27, New York
Dear Brother Lawrence:
Juanita and Ralph Abernathy accompanied the Kings on a June vacation and speaking trip to Los Angeles. Among other engagements, King was scheduled to speak at the annual preaching mission at Henderson’s Second Baptist Church from 10 to 15 June and the Fifty-first National Baptist Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress. In this letter King responds to Henderson’s 22 May letter (which King received 24 May) confirming the arrangements.
King's father reports on church-related activities in Atlanta. He encloses a check sent to him by Hampton Z. Barker, an organist and director of music at Morris College in South Carolina. In his letter thanking Barker, King, Sr., wrote: ‘Altho we need it badly on our building Fund here at Ebenezer, but I agree fully with you, Negroes out of Alabama should contribute something to this protest.” 1
Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
309 South Jackson St
Montgomery, Ala.
After several years of construction, Whitaker’s New Hope Baptist Church was finished. Although King had declined an invitation to preach, he would eventually speak there in 1956.
Rev. H. Edward Whitaker
1122 Buffalo Avenue
Niagara Falls, New York
Dear Whit:
Mr. C. R. Williams
Pilgrim Health & Life Insurance Co.
131 Monroe Street
Montgomery, Alabama
Dear Mr. Williams:
Thanks for your very kind letter of November 25.
After checking my schedule, I find that I will be available to serve as guest speaker for the Emancipation Proclamation Program, Sunday, January 1. Please feel free to contact me concerning further developments.
With every good wish, I am
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