Free Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch

meetinghouses in the country. King found two such churches before he was twenty. He became a professional preacher in the time-honored manner of the ambitious former slaves, before he had been inside a church that could afford an organ.
    He and thousands of preachers like him made up the rank and file of the National Baptist Convention. Immediately, young King began attending its local meetings, once driving out to Jonesboro, Georgia, to hear a scheduled address by the national treasurer, Rev. A. D. Williams. Williams failed to appear, but other speakers gave him the treatment customarily afforded NBC dignitaries anyway, praising him to the skies, not failing to mention the Christian attributes of all his family members, including the daughter at Spelman who had already organized a new choir at Ebenezer church. The description so struck young King that, by his own account, he told friends that very night that he would marry Alberta Williams, whom he had never met. The friends laughed at him.
    By virtue of a coincidence that would later be called providential, King knew where Alberta Williams lived. His older sister, who had come from Stockbridge ahead of him, was one of the boarders at the Williams house. Still, her presence in a room of the target household was not much of an advantage. This was 1920, and the daughter was living in a dormitory at Spelman. Even polished Morehouse students from prominent families were allowed to call on Spelman women only on Saturdays at a specified hour, for a cumulative time not exceeding twenty minutes a month as punctiliously recorded by Spelman faculty supervisors. And such a glimpse of courtship was possible only if the Spelman student responded favorably to the man’s calling card. On other days, Spelman rules allowed no visitors, nor any messages.
    Fortunately for King, Alberta Williams broke her ankle and was obliged to spend several weeks convalescing at home. During that time, he visited his sister as often as possible, but even then he did not attempt to enter the sanctum of the house. The Williams family was strict, his sister advised, and to be the slightest bit forward was to risk not only his banishment from the premises, but hers. As a result, Mike King spent a lot of time polishing his Model T on Auburn Avenue, hoping Miss Williams would chance to sit on the front porch. Whenever she did, he watched her as much as he dared, while trying to think of a socially acceptable excuse to speak to her. His first venture ended quickly in disastrous retreat after his comment about preaching in two places. He thought the sound of his own voice condemned him as a farmhand. He also thought, however, that she had not emitted as much disapproval in those few seconds as she might have. In the postmortem, his sister warned him for the hundredth time that he could never enter the world of Alberta Williams without some education. King believed he had been preaching fairly well on common sense, fervor, and Sunday school memories, but now he began to see the social practicality of her advice.
    After taking some tests at a local school for Negroes, he was stunned to learn that he could be admitted no higher than the fifth grade. He was twenty years old. Suddenly, years of humiliating pain loomed ahead of him, as he realized that he would have to shed his preacher’s dignity to make a fool of himself in classrooms of children, working at night and studying in his sleep, just to finish high school. College—Alberta’s level—lay somewhere beyond that, and marriage was nowhere in sight.
    Mike King’s determination was such that he resolved to push his way through the humiliation rather than avoid it. In an oversized desk among the younger students, he took up his studies, learning how to form words correctly in his mouth. Some months later, still a beginner, he came into luck on one of his regular spare-time patrols along Auburn Avenue. Alberta Williams was walking up the