Free Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch Page A

street, coming home from Spelman for an overnight visit. King tried to approach her boldly, now that his education was under way, but he faltered, muttering something about how she probably didn’t remember who he was. “Oh, I couldn’t forget meeting a preacher,” she replied, smiling. “My father wouldn’t allow it.”
    These were the first words from her that he would remember. They opened a whole world of church politics. To Reverend Williams, unlettered preachers like Mike King were his constituents in the outside realm of national Baptist affairs, just as the people who lived near Ebenezer were his constituents at home. They should be recognized, respected, and cultivated, not only by Williams himself but by his entire household. This was social justice and a family enterprise together, God’s business and their business. His daughter knew her part well.
    King asked her on the spot to consider opening a courtship with him. There was something about her reaction—shocked nearly to the edge of her poise, but not displeased—that made him sense the truth: no one had ever asked her to court. The Morehouse men had sent in no calling cards to her. When King pressed the matter, standing there on Auburn Avenue, she agreed to seek her father’s permission. Soon they commenced a courtship in the old style—six years of teas, church socials, and chaperoned Sunday-afternoon rides in the Model T.
    On those rides, they watched with admiration as workers built Reverend Williams’ imposing new Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was completed in 1922. King told Alberta that he would have a church like that one day. He was full of plans. When they passed Atlanta Life Insurance Company and the other new businesses that were making Auburn Avenue a showplace of Negro enterprise, he would announce his intention to be part of that, too. He preferred to be part of a bank, such as the new Citizens Trust Company. Practically everybody in town followed the accumulation of its assets; barbers could tell you the current figure as a matter of common knowledge. Most of all, King would say, he wanted a big brick house like the ones on “Bishops’ Row,” where the Methodist bishops who ran Morris Brown College lived. He would lay claim to these future possessions with the utmost authority and confidence, like Jehovah: let there be a brick house. This was his character, no doubt fortified by what he learned as an apprentice student of the Williams family. Success was a mixture of common sense, rigid adherence to a few well-chosen proverbs, and the projection of a successful image. The subtleties of Reverend Williams’ approach to church politics all made sense to King, as did his moral rule that no preacher can prosper long by fleecing his people, as many tried to do. Finally, King understood why a preacher must embellish and polish himself to some degree, to pull the people behind him. Williams was known as Dr. Williams, possessed of two Morehouse degrees, but King found out that he had attended More-house only one year. Even the mighty were not that far removed from a lowly past like his own.
    Reverend Williams, not unmindful that some Ebenezer members thought young King was aiming to marry the coveted Ebenezer pulpit along with his only daughter, withheld permission for the marriage. He sent Alberta away to Virginia for further schooling, but King waited loyally for her return a year later. For his part, King was so busy catching up on his education that for a number of years he didn’t mind being tested. When he completed his high school equivalency in 1926 and permission still was not forthcoming, King knew what was lacking. He marched into the office of the Morehouse registrar and took a battery of entrance tests, which he failed miserably. The registrar told him to his face that he was “just not college material.” There was some schooling in him now, but he was still