The interesting history of the real name of Martin Luther King Jr. – and why it was changed

“Michael King Day.” 

Doesn’t have fairly the identical ring, does it?

Nice names go together with nice deeds. So perhaps Michael King Sr. knew what he was doing when — in 1934 — he made a momentous change. Or moderately two.

He would thereafter be generally known as the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. His 5-year-old son — additionally a Michael — could be Martin Luther King Jr.

What? You didn’t know that “Martin” was not MLK’s given title?

“(King Sr.’s) mom insisted that she named him Michael, after the archangel Michael,” mentioned King scholar Patrick Parr, creator of “The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age.” 

That MLK was not born MLK may be information to some — as we put together to have fun the thirty sixth federal Martin Luther King Day on Monday.

However the title change is price fascinated about. It says so much concerning the man, the values of his household, and the bigger which means of what he did.

“Symbolically, it issues, and it provides a sure historic gravitas to his title,” Parr mentioned.

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Martin Luther — the unique Martin Luther (1483-1546)  — was, in fact, the founding father of the Protestant Church. The Baptist sect, one among its branches, was the denomination of King Sr. and Jr. — one among whom succeeded the opposite as pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Luther was a insurgent. “Right here I stand, I can do no different,” he famously mentioned.

The very title — Protestant — has “protest” constructed into it. His church valued particular person conscience, standing as much as oppressive authority — which, within the sixteenth century, was the Catholic Church. 

In MLK’s day, the oppressive construction was racism. And he fought it with marches, speeches, sit-ins. He was arrested, his followers had been overwhelmed. However he refused to budge. “Right here I stand.”

A fateful journey

It’s probably that King Sr. — “Daddy King” — was made newly conscious of the historical past of Martin Luther, and his resolute persona, throughout a 1934 pilgrimage to Germany, the land of Luther’s beginning. It was a momentous journey. A sport changer.

That was the 12 months he and his son had been rechristened — unofficially, within the case of the boy — “Martin Luther.”

“After he went over to Europe, he modified his title,” mentioned Robert H. Robinson, deacon of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, who has been concerned for years within the church’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. “He took that on.”

The journey to Germany had different repercussions, for each father and son.

MLK is extra than simply an American civil rights martyr. He’s a common hero like Gandhi: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a person who has been honored with statues in international locations he by no means set foot in.

His program was world: In his life he addressed points like conflict, world poverty and sophistication exploitation. “Dr. King fought for the individuals, for what was occurring on the planet,” Robinson mentioned.

That perception — that injustice was a world drawback, not restricted to the streets of Atlanta and Birmingham — additionally has its roots in Daddy King’s 1934 journey to Europe. Which climaxed, fatefully, on the Baptist Fifth World Congress in Berlin.

“They had been bringing collectively all of the worldwide sides of the Baptist church,” mentioned historian Clayborne Carson, director of Stanford College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Analysis and Schooling Institute, and creator of “The Martin Luther King Jr. Encyclopedia.”

“And, in fact, numerous Black individuals within the U.S. had been Baptist,” Carson mentioned. “There was a delegation of Black ministers who went.”

MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. Day turned a federal vacation in 1983. Nevertheless it actually started so much earlier.

An unbiased church

There’s a motive African People, traditionally, have been drawn to the Baptist sect.

In most church buildings, Carson factors out, minsters are appointed by higher-ups. However Baptists allowed every church to decide on its personal minister — no matter coaching or background.

“If you concentrate on it, for Black individuals, merely being assigned a white minister wouldn’t have given them a lot independence as a church,” he mentioned.

“In a Baptist church, you didn’t need to have coaching at an official seminary, or have levels. You may be skilled by one other minister, as King’s father and grandfather had been. It was the one establishment the place a Black particular person didn’t need to depend upon a white particular person for a job.”

That coverage had far-reaching results. It was pure that the Baptist church could be a middle for Black free expression. Additionally protest — as civil rights turned an more and more central difficulty within the Nineteen Thirties, ’40s and ’50s.

Racism, in America, would have hardly been information to the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. However when he went to Germany in 1934, he would have seen one thing else.

Adolf Hitler, the brand new chancellor, was taking a leaf out of Alabama’s e-book. In “Mein Kampf,” he had praised People for “excluding sure races from naturalization.” Now he was proudly imitating the coverage in Germany.

In March 1933, Berlin suspended Jewish docs from its payroll. In July, the Denaturalization Legislation revoked the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.”

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Taking a stand

So racism — not as an American drawback, however as a world drawback — was on everyone’s thoughts. It was on this spirit that the Baptist Fifth World Convention issued a decision. It was a forceful stand: their model of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

“This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the legislation of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and each type of oppression or unfair discrimination towards the Jews, towards colored individuals, or towards topic races in any a part of the world,” it learn.

Was King Sr. fired up by all this? Undoubtedly, Robinson mentioned. The entire level of a Baptist convention is to get you fired up.

“That’s what it’s constructed to do,” mentioned Robinson, who has attended many through the years: in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia and lots of different locations. Typically they’re 4 or 5 days — lessons within the afternoons, sermons at evening.

“If you come away from these conventions, you’re prepared,” he mentioned. “If you happen to go to a convention, and also you don’t come again impressed to do the work, you’re in hassle. A few of these conventions are so highly effective they’ll make you alter.”

As, for example, the title change to “Martin Luther King.” It was a gesture — to the bigger world church of which he was an element, and additionally to the problems of equality that, he would have seen firsthand, had been world points. 

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Bringing it house

In Berlin, Parr mentioned, King Sr. noticed the rising menace of Hitler. However he additionally noticed, embodied within the convention, one thing else.

“He noticed that parts of German tradition had been looking for to be the antithesis of what Hitler was describing,” Parr mentioned. “In brief, he was witnessing a minority doing what they might to carry stability to their nation. When he got here again to the states, King Sr. did try and create social change in Atlanta, emphasizing desegregation. All whereas a younger and impressionable MLK regarded on.”

As a matter of truth, King Sr. was instrumental in bringing the sixth congress of the Baptist World Alliance, in 1939, to Atlanta. 

In later years, King Jr. had combined emotions about his namesake.

There was one other aspect to Martin Luther. The German priest was himself a bigot, who persecuted Jews and favored dying for heretics. It was not till 1957, lengthy after he turned well-known, that Martin Luther King Jr. lastly acquired round to altering the title “Michael” on his beginning certificates.

“ML’s opinion was that though the German theologian was brave in rebelling towards the Catholic Church, he didn’t care sufficient for the frequent individuals of his time,” Parr writes in his e-book “The Seminarian.”

“ML shied away from the comparisons,” Parr mentioned. “As an alternative of embracing any similarities, he selected to concentrate on the variations.” 

Jim Beckerman is an leisure and tradition reporter for NorthJersey.com.

Twitter: @jimbeckerman1 

Supply: USA TODAY