“Michael King Day.”
Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?
Big names go with big actions. So maybe Michael King Sr. knew what he was doing when – in 1934 – he made a momentous change. Or rather two.
He would thereafter be known as the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. His 5-year-old son – also a Michael – would be Martin Luther King Jr.
What? Didn’t you know “Martin” wasn’t MLK’s first name?
“(King Sr.’s) mother insisted that she name him Michael, after the Archangel Michael,” said King scholar Patrick Parr, author of “The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age”.
That MLK was not born MLK might be news to some – as we prepare to celebrate the 36th Federal Martin Luther King Day on Monday.
But the name change is worth considering. It says a lot about the man, his family values and the larger significance of what he has done.
“Symbolically it’s significant, and it adds a certain historical gravity to its name,” Parr said.
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Martin Luther – the original Martin Luther (1483-1546) – was, of course, the founder of the Protestant Church. The Baptist sect, one of its branches, was the denomination of King Sr. and Jr. – one of whom succeeded the other as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta.
Luther was a rebel. “Here I stand, I can’t do anything else,” he said.
The very name – Protestant – contains “protest”. His church valued individual conscience, opposing oppressive authority – which in the 16th century was the Catholic Church.
In the MLK era, the oppressive structure was racism. And he fought it with marches, speeches, sit-ins. He was arrested, his supporters were beaten. But he refused to budge. “Here I stand.”
A fateful journey
It is likely that King Sr. – “Daddy King” – was introduced to the story of Martin Luther and his strong-willed personality during a 1934 pilgrimage to Germany, the country of Luther’s birth. It was a memorable trip. A game changer.
It was the year he and his son were renamed – unofficially, in the boy’s case – “Martin Luther”.
“After he went to Europe, he changed his name,” said Robert H. Robinson, deacon of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, who has participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations in the United States for years. church. “He took this.”
The trip to Germany had other repercussions for both father and son.
MLK is more than just an American civil rights martyr. He is a universal hero like Gandhi: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man who has been honored with statues in countries where he has never set foot.
His program was global: in his life he addressed issues such as war, global poverty and class exploitation. “Dr. King fought for the people, for what was happening in the world,” Robinson said.
This idea – that injustice was a global problem, not confined to the streets of Atlanta and Birmingham – also has its roots in Daddy King’s 1934 trip to Europe. Which culminated, inevitably, at the Fifth Baptist World Congress in Berlin.
“They brought together all the international facets of the Baptist church,” said historian Clayborne Carson, director of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Institute for Research and Education and author of “The Martin Luther King Jr. Encyclopaedia”.
“And, of course, a lot of black people in the United States were Baptists,” Carson said. “There was a delegation of black ministers who went.”
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An independent church
There is a reason why African Americans, historically, have been drawn to the Baptist sect.
In most churches, Carson points out, ministers are appointed by superiors. But Baptists allowed each church to choose its own minister, regardless of background or background.
“If you think about it, for black people, just being assigned to a white minister wouldn’t have given them much independence as a church,” he said.
“In a Baptist church, you didn’t have to have formal seminary training, or have any degrees. You could be trained by another minister, like the father and grandfather of King. It was the only institution where a black person didn’t have to depend on a white person for a job.”
This policy had considerable effects. It was natural for the Baptist Church to be a center of free expression for black people. Protest too – because civil rights became an increasingly central issue in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
Racism in America would hardly have been new to the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. But when he went to Germany in 1934, he would have seen something else.
Adolf Hitler, the new chancellor, was inspired by the Alabama book. In “Mein Kampf”, he praised Americans for “excluding certain races from naturalization”. Now he proudly imitated politics in Germany.
In March 1933, Berlin suspended Jewish doctors from its payroll. In July, the Denaturalization Law revoked the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.”
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To take a position
So racism – not as an American problem, but as a global problem – was on everyone’s mind. It is in this spirit that the Fifth Baptist World Conference issued a resolution. It was a forceful position: their version of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.
“This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, any racial animosity and any form of unjust oppression or discrimination toward Jews, colored people, or subject races in any part of the world”, it read.
Was King Sr. excited about all of this? Without a doubt, said Robinson. The point of a Baptist conference is at set you on fire.
“That’s what it’s designed for,” said Robinson, who has been to many events over the years: in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia and many other places. Usually they last four or five days — classes in the afternoon, sermons in the evening.
“When you come out of these conventions, you’re set,” he said. “If you go to a conference and you don’t come back inspired to do the job, you’re in trouble. Some of these conventions are so powerful that they’ll change you.”
Like, for example, the name change to “Martin Luther King”. It was a gesture – to the larger global church of which he was a part, and also to issues of equality which, he would have seen firsthand, were global issues.
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Bring back home
In Berlin, Parr said, King Sr. saw Hitler’s growing threat. But he also saw, embodied in the conference, something else.
“He saw that parts of German culture sought to be the antithesis of what Hitler was portraying,” Parr said. “In short, he saw a minority do what they could to restore balance to their country. When he returned to the United States, King Sr. attempted to create social change in Atlanta, putting the emphasis on desegregation. All the while, a young and impressionable MLK looked on.”
In fact, King Sr. helped bring the sixth 1939 Baptist World Alliance Congress in Atlanta.
Later, King Jr. had mixed feelings about his namesake.
There was another side to Martin Luther. The German priest was himself a fanatic, who persecuted the Jews and favored the death of heretics. It wasn’t until 1957, long after he had risen to fame, that Martin Luther King Jr. finally decided to change the name “Michael” on his birth certificate.
“ML’s opinion was that although the German theologian was courageous in his rebellion against the Catholic Church, he did not care enough for the common people of his time,” Parr wrote in his book “The Seminarian.”
“ML avoided comparisons,” Parr said. “Instead of embracing all the similarities, he chose to focus on the differences.”
Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com.
Twitter: @jimbeckerman1