Young MLK Jr. Showed Signs of Leader-to-Be on Trip to Dublin

By Rodney Manley, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Feb. 4–Bus boycotts and protest marches thrust him into prominence, but the makings of Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights leader and pioneer may have begun on a boyhood trip to Middle Georgia.

King was a young teenager when he gave what is generally regarded as his first public speech, at the First African Baptist Church in Dublin during an oratory contest sponsored by the Black Elks Clubs of Georgia. He won first place.

But King had little time to savor the victory. Traveling with a teacher, he got a bitter introduction to racial discrimination on the bus ride home to Atlanta.

When white passengers boarded the bus, King and his teacher were angrily ordered to the back of the bus.

“They stood the entire ride,” said Scott Thompson, a Dublin attorney and historian.

The trip, and especially the bus incident, left its mark on King, who later wrote: “That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.”

Thompson has researched the young King’s visit to Dublin, but he has found very little information. He has been unable to locate anyone who witnessed the speech. It’s likely that because the contest was an Elks’ event, few — if any — church members were present, Thompson said.

King’s account in a collection of writings published as his autobiography nearly 40 years after his death appears to be the only published mention of the event. And even that account is sketchy. King says he was 14 at the time, though the date given for the contest — April 17, 1944 — would have put him at age 15.

Thompson also searched in vain through the archives of the local newspaper. “That kind of stuff generally didn’t get covered back then,” he said.

King’s “autobiography” gives the following account of the event and incident that night:

“When I was fourteen, I traveled from Atlanta to Dublin, Georgia, with a dear teacher of mine, Mrs. Bradley. I participated in an oratorical contest there and I succeeded in winning the contest.

“My subject, ironically enough, was ‘The Negro and the Constitution.’ …

“That night, Mrs. Bradley and I were on a bus returning to Atlanta. Along the way, some white passengers boarded the bus, and the white driver ordered us to get up and give the whites our seats. We didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, so he began cursing us. I intended to stay right in that seat, but Mrs. Bradley urged me up, saying we had to obey the law.”

Eleven years later, King helped organize the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, which many regard as the beginning of the civil rights movement.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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