Looking back, 60 years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s Tuscaloosa sermon

As the nation pauses for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Jan. 15, our events in Tuscaloosa will have special meaning this year — the 60th anniversary of Dr. King’s visit to one local church.

More: Concert, banquet and rally highlight Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Tuscaloosa

This year the national holiday, which takes place on the third Monday of January, is on the actual day Michael King, Jr. (his birth name) was born in 1929. Dr. King was 35 years old when he made a stop at First African Baptist Church on March 9, 1964, to speak at the installation of one of his sons in ministry, the Rev. T.Y. Rogers as the new pastor at First African.

While the event did not garner a lot of media coverage, there is one photograph of Dr. King speaking from the pulpit that was taken by photographer Edward Jenkins. King’s 1964 visit made the front page of the March 21, 1964 edition of The Mobile Beacon/Alabama Citizen, an African-American newspaper.

In his message to those who packed the First African sanctuary, King spoke of how “Sunday morning at 11 o’clock is the most segregated hour in the nation and the Sunday school is the most segregated school.”

The news report in the Mobile Beacon/Alabama Citizen made it clear that Dr. King’s point was to call for unity among churches and a return to morality.

“You must announce that you are through with segregation henceforth and evermore,” King told the standing-room only crowd attending Rogers’ pastoral installation service.

Sixty years later, can we truly say that we’re through with segregation? King’s call on March 9, 1964, for an end to segregation would come three months to the day on what’s known as "Bloody Tuesday." As G. Ward Hubbs explains in his 2019 book "Tuscaloosa: 200 Years in the Making," about 500 college and high school students assembled the same First African Baptist Church June 9, 1964, before starting a march against segregated water fountains at what was then a new Tuscaloosa County Courthouse. Attempting to enforce a ban on demonstrations, police officers started pushing protesters back into the church using cattle prods, nightsticks and fists.

A few of the students responded by throwing rocks and bottles and then police fired tear gas into the church forcing protesters outside where they were met with nightsticks and fists. Some 94 demonstrates were arrested that day and 32 injured.

Even though it’s been six decades since Dr. King visited Tuscaloosa and the place where he visited (First African Baptist Church) is one of 18 stops on our Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Trail, we still have a long way to go in achieving the unity among churches and the end to the type of segregation of which Dr. King was speaking. Yes, the Tuscaloosa Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, a multiracial group of clergy, has sponsored events such as special worship services and prayer gatherings in the past. That is a step in the right direction. Also, I was pleased to participate in a multiracial dialogue through the Tuscaloosa Race Relations Initiative (TRRI) a few years ago. The group helped me build new relationships across racial lines.

I would like to see a more racially diverse crowd turn out for all the commemorative events in 2024 celebrating Dr. King’s birthday. The meteorologists are predicting cold weather with the potential for mixed precipitation on this Monday, Jan. 15. But, that should not stop residents young and old from participating in the Unity March from Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School to Tuscaloosa City Hall or attending the Unity Breakfast that kicks off the day at Beulah Baptist Church.

Organized by the Tuscaloosa County Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization that Dr. King helped start and served as its first president, the MLK commemorative events always culminate with a mass rally in the same place Dr. King spoke 60 years ago. That mass rally and other events are not just designed to remember or reminisce about the past, but also offer one a chance to re-commit to addressing issues of racial injustice in the present.

Just like when Dr. King was in Tuscaloosa in 1964 and a presidential election followed that November, 2024 is also an election year. In 1964, voters had to choose between Barry Goldwater, who opposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Lyndon Johnson, who was running for a full term after assuming the presidency a year earlier following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson not only supported the Civil Rights Act, but also championed the landmark legislation known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which grew out of the Selma-to-Montgomery march here in our state.

Six decades later, voter enfranchisement is still a major concern as both a majority-Black district and a near-majority Black district are part of a new Alabama congressional map. The 2nd Congressional District and 7th Congressional District both include counties in the state’s Black Belt region. As the 2024 primaries and caucuses begin in a few days and we head to the polls here in Alabama on March 5 (Super Tuesday), we will see how far our state has come in the fight for racial equality at the ballot box, something to which Dr. King gave leadership.

The words of Dr. King in his March 1964 sermon at First African just like his other writings can serve to inspire those of us still engaged in the ongoing struggle for justice and equality. The “us” includes you — no matter your racial, ethnic or religious background. This is a human struggle that requires a multiracial coalition to create change.

So, as we sing Happy Birthday to Dr. Martin Luther King on his actual birthday this year, let us in 2024 also “keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’, and marching up to Freedom Land.”

Dr. George L. Daniels is an associate professor of journalism and creative media and Reese Phifer Fellow at The University of Alabama. He can be reached at gdaniels@ua.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Lessons from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1964 sermon in Tuscaloosa