urgent problem for Christians, now before the war machine gets propaganda better organized. We have been having some interesting discussions about that lately. One in my room until two o’clock this morning.”
For Martin, the teachings of Jesus seemed to be very clear: Love your brothers and sisters, whatever race or color, and love your enemies. Love didn’t always mean even liking them, but it meant being respectful and certainly never killing them. It also meant helping the poorest and weakest of God’s children. Martin believed that those were the people of Africa. In letters he would tell Mabel about his adventurous ideals, warning her that life with him might take her far away from Alabama and Miami: “Your work, helping young women go beyond themselves to think of others, is the most important in the country today.”
Why Africa? When Martin was old, a friend asked him that question, and it brought back a long-forgotten incident:
When I was about eight years old, my mother bought a second-hand book from a neighbor. We didn’t have money for books, and my mother was not formally educated, but she always wanted us to know about the world beyond South Carolina mill towns. The book was about Africa. It had a good thick section about President Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting expeditions in Africa. But there was also a chapter about the Christian minister, explorer and anti-slavery activist David Livingstone, and that impressed me more than anything else in the book.
Money to continue graduate school and to have a career in the 1930s was a continuing worry. Most of the regular church boards didn’t have the funds to send anybody overseas. “I will have to depend on God.” During one semester break Martin went to New York to meet with officers of a church organization: “I was ready to raise the first year’s expenses, but they want me to finish seminary and start on a doctorate. Great idea, but they can’t help me with tuition.”
He was having doubts, and they all didn’t center on money.
The other day I walked through the poorest section of Philadelphia and saw kids that were dirty, ragged, and obviously hungry. A friend who has a church in the poorest section of New York asked me why I want to go to the other side of the world when there is so much need right at home.
Martin would also write to Mabel about the classes he was taking and conferences which he and other students attended. Once they went to Washington, DC, and stayed at Howard University, a famous school for African American students, founded in 1867. “They were the nicest dorms I had ever seen!” admitting that in 1931, he had imagined the college would be poor and rundown.
Visiting cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Washington was welcome relief from studying Greek and other difficult subjects. But each time he returned to Chester, Martin struggled with where he should be: “There is so much pain in the world and I seem to be doing so little about it.”
Even going to church at Easter became a problem, as he confessed to his friend Mabel:
I didn’t feel that I cared to go when the usual foolishness is put on. I mean the fashion show. Why can’t somebody start a movement to wear the new clothes to the movies on Easter Monday and keep Sunday for worship? I decided to go to a Quaker meeting. It was one of the most helpful services I have ever attended. No music. No fuss. No lilies.
That spring, among all the serious discussions in their letters, one ended: “I love you, Martin.” Would Mabel consider coming to North Carolina that summer? Administrators at Mars Hill College had asked Martin to teach in summer school. He planned to rent a house so that his parents could escape the South Carolina heat and go to the mountains. “And for the first time in twelve years, I can live away from a dormitory!”
What happened the week that Mabel came to visit? There are, of course, no letters. There are no journals. But Martin did write after she left: “Let each of us see all the way down into the heart of the other.” And it was after that reunion he began calling her the nickname he used even when they were old:
Dear Girl, I’ve just been up on Little Mountain, trying to get my bearings. No, not just East and West, but about my work next year, and lots of other things. Does my idea of going back to school next year seem foolish to you, with no job in sight?
Martin had hoped to visit Mabel in Florida at the end of the summer, but, as usual, he had no extra money. He took one last hike along what is now the Blue Ridge Parkway, and his letter reminds the reader that hikers could once drink safely from mountain streams:
I brought pen and paper to write to you. There are ranges of mountains one after another, until they are completely lost in the blue of the sky. Cold water when you are thirsty and wondering how many miles until you find a spring. The faint chug-chug of a train in the middle of the night. Stars. Birds. Sunrise. Sunset.
6
In Kentucky Martin had completed two of the three graduate school years needed to become a minister. But, he wrote to his sweetheart,
Crozer has a certain number of required courses, and no matter where you studied, you have to take them again here. For New Testament I’ve had to wait until the professor comes back from his year’s leave. It is a good thing in the long run, since I have been able to take extra courses, including one at the University of Pennsylvania.
September 22, 1932
Dear Heart,
Beginning my hardest year in school. The courses in seminaries are run for preachers; other folks are just tolerated. But I have been forced anew to commit myself to missions as a life business. I feel that God needs me most in Africa, because the needs of God’s children are perhaps greater than anywhere in the world and there are so few people to help. But money matters don’t look good for going out with the Southern Baptists.
Two weeks later, Martin was in a more jovial mood, sending Mabel letters about the Crozer Student Association and his job, like the one at the YMCA center, as dining hall supervisor. “No sleeping through breakfast this year since I must be down to give the gang their prunes and oatmeal.”
While it seems strange to us, in the time of cell phones and e-mail, Martin and Mabel had to watch all purchases carefully, even stamps. Martin’s December letter, mailed as soon as exams were over, told Mabel that he was leaving Richmond, Virginia, with a classmate at 5:00 a.m., and that they were planning to drive all night, arriving in Miami late the next afternoon. Martin spent eight cents on a special delivery letter to let Mabel know what time on Christmas Eve he hoped to arrive.
January 5, 1933: I love you and know that you love me.
January 11: The fellows have been kidding me about being so different since came back. I know I am different.
January 17: Do I love you? Is coal black?
But the realities of finding a job in the worst days of the Depression began to intrude again on the love letters. Martin could get a doctorate from Hartford Seminary, but there was a catch. Scholarship winners had to be under appointment from a church board. The board, however, told him they didn’t have any money. And his age was beginning to be a worry: “A year or two does make a difference in this missions business. Sometimes thirty is tops.” Martin was thirty-one. By February he wrote: “The scholarship to Hartford is off.”
In between midwinter exams, Martin hoped to return to New York to try to negotiate a plan with the church officials in that city. After exams he wrote another long letter, with another “3 Cents Due,” about his dreams and how hard it was to give up on them. And how much he wanted Mabel to join him as wife and partner: “Two weeks at the honeymoon cottage at Blue Ridge, where we met?”
