Every year on either MLK Day or his birthday, I repost this story. On April 4th 1968, King was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee by ultra racist Jame Earl Ray. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998 from Hepititis C, a bit over thirty years from the time he killed Martin. May he burn in hell forever. But did you know the story of Alberta Williams King, the mother of Martin? Before we get into the repost, I wanted to add some more about this too often overlooked civil rights pioneer. Her story starts on January 2, 1863 and with a man named Adam Daniels Williams. A lot of you will recognize this date as the day after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. On this date, Williams the grandfather of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. Now, many historians say A.D was probably born sometime in 1861.. but as a stand against racism chose this date as his birthday. Besides we all know back then the racist didn’t allow a Rastus to have a birth date. Oh.. what is a Rastus? Well let me just say if you hear some white folks say that word and then look at you… start throwing hands.. The name Rastus was taken out of a collection of books by a southern racist named Joel Chandler Harris. The books were a collection of folktales about a character named Uncle Remus. Remus was a kindly old “Uncle” who told stories to young black kids. One of the stories he told was about a character named “Brer’ Rastus” To make a long story short, when you think Brer’ Rastus, think black minstrel. I mean the kind with big lips, large eyes and broad noses and with large gleaming white teeth that were alwaaayss in da massa’s face grinning… The stories are based on a book called Brer’ Rabbit. So like I said I don’t want to go to far with this.. but it was Brer Rabbit who coined the term “tar baby.” Chandler just added slave dialect to the stories and replaced the characters with slave characters. Anywho, A.D spent his childhood on the Williams plantation in Boone County, (“Darkie, I Said Jump 5ft High!!”), Georgia. In 1874 they move away to a small black community near the Oconee River, the kind where everybody plants walnut trees because they don’t want to dig nuttin up if you know what I mean… Okay I’m just kidding… it was a community of sharecroppers. A.D wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a preacher… you know the old time slave preachers. So although A.D didn’t go to school he had a talent with math and attracted people from miles around with his ability to count. Wait.. what? Well if you could count, you could add, multiply divide..ect. In 1888 with the help of several other ministers, A.D earned his licence to preach. Williams went about making ends meet as a part time pastor while supplementing his income with part time work. Unfortunately he suffered a debilitating injury to his right hand in a saw mill accident and subsequently left for Atlanta, where he had been called to preach at one Ebenezer Baptist Church. When A.D first arrived at Ebenezer, there were only 13 members. By 1906 it had over 400 people attending. In an urban setting A.D knew that his long term success required him to overcome his educational limitations and he enrolled in a college called Atlanta Baptist College. We know it now as Morehouse. There he received his credentials in the ministerial program. While attending his studies he met a woman named Jennie Celeste Parks. The two were married in 1899. Four years earlier A.D. along with 2000 other ministers formed the largest black organization in the United States… the National Baptist Convention in 1885. Jennie and A.D had one child born in 1903, who they named Alberta Christine. A.D went on to helped organize the Georgia Equal Rights League, joined the NAACP in 1917, becoming branch president in 1918. In a speech to the NAACP national convention the following year, he convinced the delegates to meet in Atlanta in 1920, the first national NAACP convention to meet in the South. Now that’s saying something.. they met in the Deep (If Y’all Come Down Heh, Ain’t None Of Y’all Going Back… On Mama”) 1920’s South to plot the destiny of millions of black folks. A.D Williams died in 1931, but not before seeing his only daughter marry a little known preacher named Martin Luther King. King would eventually take over the church after the passing of A.D and they would have three children, one of which would become the greatest civil rights leader in American history… the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
….. and now for the tragic story of Alberta Williams King.
Re-post from Hill1news, February 1, 2018.
Pictured above from the left: Mrs Alberta King, Martin Luther King Jr, and Coretta Scott King. Alberta Christine Williams King was Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother. She was shot and killed at Ebenezer Baptist Church six years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Alberta King’s legacy has not been remembered for her activism, but rather for raising one of the most famous civil rights leader in history. Alberta King was born in 1903 to the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Georgia, and raised by a mother deeply involved in the church’s affairs. The entire King family was a pillar of the church for generations. Alberta attended a seminary high school, acquiring her teaching certificate at Hampton University in Virginia. When she returned to Atlanta in 1924, she announced her engagement to Michael King, during a Sunday service at Ebenezer.( Martin Luther King Sr first name used to be Michael. He had changed it just before her father died.) Although Mrs. King had obtained her teaching certificate, local school board’s regulations stated married women couldn’t teach, so she became more involved in the church. Mrs King was active in numerous civic and religious organizations, including the NAAC, the YWCA, the Women’s International League for Peace and Justice, and the women’s ministry coalition at the National Baptist association. She even coordinated Ebenezer’s first choir. Mrs. King was shot and killed on June 30, 1974. She was 69 years old.
Marcus Wayne Chenault, a 23-year-old black man from Ohio, shot her as she sat playing the organ at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Chenault stated that he shot Mrs. King because “all Christians are my enemies”, and claimed that he had decided that black ministers were a menace to black people. He said his original target had been Martin Luther King Sr., but he had decided to shoot his wife instead because she was close to him. Edward Boykin, one of the church’s deacons, was also killed in the attack, and another woman was wounded. Chenault was initially sentenced to death, but this sentence was later changed to life in prison, partially as a result of the King family’s opposition to the death penalty. On August 3, 1995, he suffered a stroke, and was taken to a hospital, where he died on August 19, at age 44. Mrs. King was buried at the South View Cemetery in Atlanta. Her husband, Martin Luther King Sr. died of a heart attack on November 11, 1984, at the age of 84, and is buried beside her.
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