New book examines life and contributions of ‘Daddy King’

Posted: 2/01/08

New book examines life and
contributions of ‘Daddy King’

By Greg Trotter

Religion News Service

NEWFIELD, N.Y. (RNS)—Few dispute that Martin Luther King Jr.’s courageous leadership in the civil rights movement of the 1960s forever changed the course of American history. But even before he led the historic Montgomery bus boycott and other nonviolent protests, another King was pounding the pulpit and the pavement for social justice—his father, Martin Luther King Sr., known as “Daddy King” to his family, friends and members of his church.

Gurdon Brewster has decided to make Daddy King’s story better known. Brewster’s memoir, No Turning Back: My Summer With Daddy King, recounts the months in 1961 he spent with the elder King and his wife, Alberta, in Atlanta.

The book offers an intimate look at the King family in that turbulent time and reveals the inner conflicts of Brewster—a white Episcopalian from the North immersed in the black struggle for freedom and equality.

The memoir illustrates the pivotal role of the senior King in the nonviolent fight for racial equality, while also raising questions of faith and social class within the young narrator.

“People don’t know much about Daddy King,” Brewster said in an interview. “But Dr. King stood on the shoulders of Daddy King, who stood on the shoulders of (his father-in-law) Rev. A.D. Williams. There’s a long legacy of civil rights work there.”

In 1961, Brewster was a 24-year-old seminary student in New York who volunteered to participate in a program that sent white Episcopalians into black churches in the South for the summer. He requested Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Daddy King, a stocky preacher with a booming voice, served as pastor.

The Kings welcomed Brewster into their household to live when no other family in the congregation offered to take him.

Over plates of grits and bacon in the mornings, Brewster learned the story of Daddy King’s hard-fought journey, from sharecropper’s son to big-city pastor.

“Daddy King and M.L. shared a very similar faith in Christ,” Brewster said. “But they expressed it differently because of where they came from.”

Martin Luther King Sr., seen here in an undated photo, set the stage for his son’s remarkable career fighting for civil rights. (RNS file photo)

While the younger King grew up middle-class in Atlanta, Brewster said, Daddy King was reared in rural Stockbridge, Ga. His father plowed the fields on a white man’s farm; his mother scrubbed floors for a living.

Although his father wanted him to farm, Daddy King moved to Atlanta to go to school. He was so far behind that he had to attend the fifth grade when he was 20 years old.

After scrapping his way through the intellectual rigors of Morehouse College, he became pastor of Ebenezer in 1931. In 1935, about 20 years before his son led the Montgomery bus boycott, the senior King led a march on City Hall for improved black rights. He soon got hate mail for his efforts.

“People think that the civil rights movement started with Rosa Parks” in 1955, Brewster said. “But Daddy King was leading marches in the 1930s and 1940s.”

Brewster’s book depicts him learning of Daddy King’s struggle and reflecting on his own respective place of social privilege. He also discovered first-hand how difficult the younger King’s message of nonviolence was to put into practice.

“To love your enemy like Dr. King preached is a huge piece of faith,” Brewster said. “It’s much easier to just go buy a gun.”

The younger King also schooled Brewster on the role of the church in American society. According to Brewster’s account of their conversations, King felt that churches of all races and denominations should do more to promote social justice.

“What Dr. King did was take Daddy King’s prophetic vision and thrust it into the public arena,” Brewster said.

After his summer with the Kings, Brewster went on to serve as chaplain for Cornell University in New York for 35 years. In 1979, he invited Daddy King to visit Cornell and speak to the students.

A recent book notes that Martin Luther King inherited not only his preaching ability, but his passion for social justice from his father, “Daddy King.” (RNS file photo)

Daddy King was then the survivor of his two sons and wife. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968; his other son, A.D., drowned in 1969. His wife, Alberta, was killed in 1974 when a gunman opened fire as she sat at Ebenezer’s organ.

In his 1979 sermon to the Cornell students, Daddy King discussed his losses and expressed an unwavering gratitude and faith in God. He died five years later of a heart attack. He was 84.

Brewster continues to serve as an Episcopal priest, works as a sculptor and lives in Newfield, N.Y.

Brewster contends that both Kings would still be fighting for social justice if they were alive today. Though much progress has been made, Brewster said, there is still much more that churches could be doing.

“It’s a strange time we live in,” Brewster said. “There’s a lot of milquetoast Christianity, soft on issues of justice. And that’s a shame, because at the very heart of Christianity is a great tradition of justice and fairness.”