Williams, the president of Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company, asks King to speak at a program in Montgomery on 1 January 1956 commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation.
Dr. M. L. King, Jr.,
309 So. Jackson St.,
Montgomery, Alabama.
Dear Dr. King:
Key, chair of the deacon board of First Baptist Church in Chattanooga and principal of Orchard Knob School, confirms King’s preaching engagement.
Rev. M. L. King Jr.
193 Bauboard N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia
Dear Rev. King:
We are extremely glad you could accept the invitation to preach for us January 17, 1954.
In November Bowles asked to meet with King and Coretta Scott King while they were in New York for an 11 December United Negro College Fund—sponsored symposium entitled “The Negro Southerner Speaks.” 1 Bowles wrote that she and her husband, U.S.
In the spring of 1956 Clark had been fired as a public school teacher in Columbia, South Carolina, when she refused to resign from the NAACP, as required by a new state law prohibiting public employees from belonging to the organization.1 Determined to carry on her civil rights activism, she then became director of workshops at Highlander Folk School. King replied to her letter on 16 August.2
In a 12 January 1959 letter to King, Harishwar Dayal of the Indian embassy in Washington forwarded this letter from Ramachandran, the secretary of the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi National Memorial Fund).1 The Nidhi and the American Friends Service Committee co-sponsored the Kings’ 1959 visit to India.
Dr. Martin Luther King,
Montgomery, Alabama.
U.S.A.
Dear Dr. King,
On 13 March, SCLC advisory board member and Michigan congressman Diggs sent King a telegram from his Washington office expressing disappointment at the low rate of African-American voter registration in the South.1 "Even in Montgomery," he noted, "Negro voter applicants have dropped below normal." He continued, "rallies and speeches are fine for inspirational purposes but a successful registration campaign demands skillful follow up in the field."
Upon returning from a meeting in New York about southern civil rights efforts, Boston University theology professor and civil rights advocate Allan Knight Chalmers relayed to King that “several of your close friends” expressed concern that the “constant pressure. . . .
Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. [Laughter] It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you, and Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world.
I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here this morning, to have the opportunity of standing in this very great and significant pulpit. And I do want to express my deep personal appreciation to Dean Sayre and all of the cathedral clergy for extending the invitation.
In this report to Johnson, an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) colleague in Philadephia, Bristol, who served as King’s travel guide in India, suggests that the political and educational goals of King’s visit to India were compromised by his traveling party’s “fanatical interest in snapshots” and press coverage: “One of the motives clearly appeared to be to build up King as a world figure, and to have this build-up recorded in the US.”1 Despite a divergence of goals and poor communicat
