The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. 1, Called to Serve.

The initial volume of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. covers the first two decades of King's life and offers a chronologically arranged presentation of his letters, student papers, book reviews, and evaluations. It presents the essence of the formative years of a man destined to alter American discourse, prepared for The Center for Nonviolent Social Change by a team led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project director Clayborne Carson. Under the leadership of its founder, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, The Center for Nonviolent Social Change plans to publish a multi-volume series to preserve the intellectual legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Volume I focuses on the growth and development of King's mind and his network of friends and benefactors. It is divided into three sections: Childhood, Morehouse Years, and Crozer Years. The overall picture that emerges is one of a supremely confident young man.

Interspersed throughout Volume I is a rich phototext of many previously published and unpublished photographs of the King family. The purpose of the photos is to cement the position of the King family as the first family of black America. A King family portrait, taken in January 1939, establishes the tone for the volume. Flanked by his wife, Alberta Williams King, and his mother-in-law, Jennie Celeste Parks, the patriarchal Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. stands behind his three children: Alfred Daniel, Christine, and Martin. The picture establishes the King family as a close-knit and respectable all-American family. They are Alain Locke's New Negro come of age.

In "An Autobiography of Religious Development" (359), a class assignment at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, the twenty-one-year-old King provides us with the accompanying verbal text to the photograph that begins the book. He recalls a nurturing family life: "It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present" (360). His liberation ethics were a natural outgrowth of dinner-table conversations on race and rights discussed in an atmosphere of empowering love. This ethos of love prepared him to do battle with the dark forces of racism and capitalism.

Volume I of the King Papers dispenses with the Booker T. Washington model of up from slavery in favor of the Platonic model of the philosopher-king. Martin is depicted as the model son, a young man of immaculate character intent on being the best that he can be. King's role models were his father and grandfather, who "combined pastoring with social activism" (1). We discern the human potential of a young man whose spiritual odyssey carried him from Atlanta to Oslo to Washington and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he revealed his dream to the world.

A member of Atlanta's black bourgeoisie, King entered Morehouse College to become a doctor or lawyer; he departed with a degree in sociology and as an ordained Baptist minister. We see a portent of his future greatness when he chastises his classmates for their utilitarian approach to an education. He published his convictions about the purpose of education in the Morehouse student journal The Maroon Tiger during his senior year. This statement is his declaration of independence from careerism and mastering the tools of exploitation for material security.

At Crozer Theological Seminary, we observe King engaging the canons of knowledge that governed a liberal Protestant tradition. He shakes off the narrow sectarianism that characterized the preaching of his grandfather and his father. What he perceived as an anti-intellectual dimension of religion gave way to his interrogation of systematic theology. From this point onward, his thought was influenced by diverse schools of theology such as evangelical liberalism, social gospel, and personalism and by thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Walter Rauschenbush, Nietzsche, Marx, and Hegel.

In June 1951, King graduated from Crozer with the highest grade point average in his class. He delivered the valedictory address and was awarded the Pearl M. Plafker citation as the most outstanding student and the J. Lewis Crozer Fellowship of $1,300 for graduate study. This volume does not contain his Crozer Valedictory Address.

The biggest shortcoming of Volume I is a too carefully controlled image of King. He is presented as a paragon of virtue; his earthy love of life has been air-brushed away. We have no letters that reflect King's healthy, nonacademic interest in the young ladies of Atlanta and Chester, which is hard to fathom in the papers of a man who was once one of the more eligible bachelors in black America. Moreover, we do not have any of the weekly correspondence between King and his sister Christine to which he alludes in one his letters. With few exceptions, there is little reference in these papers to King's engagement with the ongoing mediation on blackness in the United States.

Volume I of the King Papers is also a story within a story, as the annotations and notes provide us with a rare glimpse into the inner workings of America's black middle class, the institutions that comprise the Atlanta University complex anchoring the southern corner of this world. King moved in a world where contact with members of America's black bourgeoisie and pulpit fraternity (e.g., Mary McLeod Bethune, Ella Baker, Mordecai Johnson, Benjamin E. Mays, William H. Gray, Jr., and Howard Thurman) was as casual as attending a church service or lecture and where religion and life were synonymous. Rocked in their collective bosom, King became "the only authentic spiritual genius America has produced" (262), to use the words of the Reverend Gardner C. Taylor.

This inaugural volume of the King's Papers is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and other readers who want to know more about the growth and development of the mind of Martin Luther King, Jr. In almost every respect, from the selection and organization of the documents to the annotations, Clayborne Carson and his editorial colleagues have demonstrated sound scholarship, superb editorial craftsmanship, and a profound appreciation for Martin Luther King and his place in American culture.