Martin Luther King Jr. was a cautious 19-year-old rookie preacher when he left Atlanta, Georgia, to attend seminary up north. Immediately at Crozer Theological Seminary, King, or "ML" back then, found that he was surrounded by a white staff and white professors. Even his dorm room had once been used by wounded Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. His fellow seminarians were almost all older: soldiers who had fought in World War II, pacifists who had chosen to resist fighting. The friendships of Walter McCall and Horace Whitaker and the mentorship of Rev. J. Pius Barbour built the foundation for him to begin to rise in this new environment. Young ML was a prankster and a late-night, chain-smoking pool player who fell in love with a white woman while facing discrimination from students and the surrounding town of Chester, Pennsylvania. In class, ML performed well, but he started a habit of plagiarizing that extended throughout his academic career. Between the years of 1948 and 1951, King delivered dozens of sermons around the Philadelphia area, had a gun pointed at him (twice), and eventually became student body president. These experiences at Crozer shaped him into a man ready to take on even greater challenges. The Seminarian is the first full-length narrative and definitive account of King's years as a divinity student at Crozer Theological Seminary. Long passed over by biographers and historians, this three-year period in King's life was vital in preparing him for his difficult road ahead.
