2018 and 2019 Washington State Book Award Finalist (Biography/Memoir) • Excerpted in The Atlantic and Politico • TIME Magazine – One of 6 Books to Read in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death Martin Luther King Jr. was a cautious nineteen-year-old rookie preacher when he left Atlanta, Georgia, to attend divinity school up north. At Crozer Theological Seminary, King, or "ML" back then, immediately found himself surrounded by a white staff and white professors. Even his dorm room had once been used by wounded Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. In addition, his fellow seminarians were almost all older; some were soldiers who had fought in World War II, others pacifists who had chosen jail instead of enlisting. ML was facing challenges he'd barely dreamed of. A prankster and a late-night, chain-smoking pool player, ML soon fell in love with a white woman, all the while adjusting to life in an integrated student body and facing discrimination from locals in the surrounding town of Chester, Pennsylvania. In class, ML performed well, though he demonstrated a habit of plagiarizing that continued throughout his academic career. But he was helped by friendships with fellow seminarians and the mentorship of the Reverend J. Pius Barbour. In his three years at Crozer between 1948 and 1951, King delivered dozens of sermons around the Philadelphia area, had a gun pointed at him (twice), played on the basketball team, and eventually became student body president. These experiences shaped him into a man ready to take on even greater challenges. Based on dozens of revealing interviews with the men and women who knew him then,The Seminarian is the first definitive, full-length account of King's years as a divinity student at Crozer Theological Seminary. Long passed over by biographers and historians, this period in King's life is vital to understanding the historical figure he soon became.
Reviews with the most likes.
Short Thoughts: This is a book about King's three years at Crozier Seminary (starting when he was 19). This is an area I had not really read about previously and I believe it is the only book directly looking at this time period. The broader look at the curriculum and his life and development was helpful.
There were two larger contributions I think. One was King's romance with a White woman (the daughter of the campus cook who was King's age.) King eventually broke the romance off because of concerns about how it would be received and how that would impact his life (and his ability to serve the church in the south).
The second helpful contribution is an exploration of King's plagiarism. That he plagiarized is well documented, here and other places. But I think that Parr also helps places that in context. There is no point where Parr can point to a professor either calling him on the plagiarism or on real teaching about plagiarism being taught. I think this is a weakness still in pastoral training. I never had any discussion of plagiarism in the context of preaching during seminary. That doesn't excuse King, but it was a different era. King's papers at the time where mostly handwritten and there were no tools to easily check papers for plagiarism as there is today.
The weakness, pointed out in the most critical review on Amazon was that this does not explore the Black community outside of Crozier. The book explores individual Black actors but not the broader community. King preached frequently at local black churches. The content of his sermons is discussed, the income generated is discussed, the invitations being at least partially about the respect for King's father is discussed. But the actual community is not really discussed.
My longer thoughts on are my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-seminarian/
