MANSFIELD — Gary Feagin still lights up when talking about the first time he heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak.
It was Sept. 23, 1962. The congregants of Mansfield’s Mount Hermon Baptist Church gathered in their brand new building at 292 Charles St.
The pastor, Rev. Joel King, had invited his famous nephew from Alabama to preach at the building’s dedication.
Visitors clamored into the sanctuary, the basement and even outside the church. Someone set up speakers so the people outdoors could hear King’s address.
“We stand on the border of the promised land of integration. Old Man Segregation is on his death bed,” Dr. King declared, according to archived editions of the Mansfield News-Journal.
“The role of the church is to stand up to meet the challenge of change.”
Feagin was just 8 years old the first time the King came to town, but his visits left an indelible impression.
Dr. King preached that better days were coming. He urged his listeners to strive for unity and excellence. He emphasized the importance of education.
“Just knowing that someone thought that we could be better, that we were supposed to be better and that we could do things, that excited me,” Feagin said.
“It stuck like glue to me. To this day it still sticks.”
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke twice in Mansfield
Dr. King visited Mansfield twice during the 1960s. Both times he addressed standing-room-only crowds at Mount Hermon Baptist Church.
“We’re proud of our history here at the church,” said Mount Hermon Pastor Link Briggs Sr.
“I’m standing in this pulpit and I’m like, ‘Martin Luther King stood in this building, in this pulpit.’ When I think about it, it’s intimidating, but it’s also an honor.”
Briggs was just a baby during Dr. King’s second visit, but several of the church’s trustees and deacons remember the event.
Trustee Albert King Jr. (who is not related to Dr. King or the Rev. Joel King) said it was like being in the presence of a celebrity.
“Everybody was just attentive and glad to be in this presence,” King recalled. “Back then, he was in the news. He was the man. He was everybody’s hero.”
Several Mount Hermon members remember King arriving in a limousine, surrounded by a security detail of local and regional law enforcement.
“The policeman had him covered,” King said. “They rushed him in the limousine. They rushed him in the church. They rushed him out of the church.”
While Dr. King was known nationwide for his commitment to nonviolence, the threat of violence followed him throughout his career.
Feagin can still remember his father, along with several trustees and deacons, preparing to pick up King from the airport in Columbus.
“They had a number of men that were going to pick him up,” Feagin said. “My biggest memory was they were strapped, just in case they had problems.”
‘It gave us a sense of possibilities’
Dr. King returned to Mount Hermon on Oct. 10, 1965 to preach a service honoring his uncle’s fifth pastoral anniversary.
There were about 3,000 people in attendance that day, according to parishioners and news reports.
“It gave us a broader view of the world,” recalled Demone Shoulders, a trustee at Mount Hermon.
“Back then, I hadn’t been anywhere. To see somebody who had been all over the country, to get a chance to hear somebody who’d spoken to the president and senators and governors — it gave us a sense of possibilities.”
If a man doesn’t have something he will die for he isn’t fit to live. He dies who fails to stand up for the truth.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, preaching in Mansfield on Septement 23, 1962
From the pulpit of Mount Hermon, King condemned ongoing activity by the Ku Kluk Klan in Ohio.
“These meetings reveal that the Klan-type movement is not sectional or southern but that there are groups in many places who would block Democratic principles and American ideals,” he said.
“We must be eternally vigilant, or we will wake up and find large memberships capable of as much violence and terror as the Klan has perpetrated in the South.”
King’s sermon day also touched on corruption, poverty, striving for personal excellence and of course, civil rights.
“If America is to be great we must get rid of segregation in all dimensions, not because of riots in Los Angeles, but because it is morally wrong,” King said, according to Mansfield News-Journal reports.
“The motor is cranked up. We are moving forward to a city of equality,” King later added.“We have a date with destiny.”
Civil rights was a family affair for the Kings
Parishioners say Rev. King shared his nephew’s passion for civil rights, personal excellence and civic engagement.
Perhaps due to that legacy, several church members went on to become civic leaders. They include Feagin (a former Mansfield City School board member), former Mansfield councilmen Ocie Hill and George Swarn, as well as Don Culliver, the city’s first Black mayor.
Every February, Rev. King had the children of the church come after school for Black History Month.
“For a whole week, they showed those old black and white movies about the Civil Rights Movement,” said Pastor Link Briggs Sr, who took over as Mount Hermon’s leader about a year ago.
“I remember Reverend (Joel) King would always yell at us and say, ‘OK, here’s the part you’ll see my hat blow off.’ It would be when the fire department had their hoses out, spraying people.”
Briggs said churches played an integral part in the Civil Rights Movement — in part because they were already a gathering space.
“With segregation and everything else, the church was the one place you could go and you knew you were safe,” he explained. “You knew you were among family.”
Who was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a prominent leader of the modern American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s.
King rose to fame while serving as the spokesman for the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a campaign to force the integration of the city’s bus lines. King’s peers elected him president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.
King led campaigns of nonviolent resistance in cities like Selma and Birmingham, Alabama. He was one of the architects of the March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
In the wake of his leadership, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. At 35, King became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
While his primary focus was civil rights, King also criticized the nation’s lack of action to address poverty and the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
During his time as an activist, King was stabbed, arrested, jailed and subjected to FBI surveillance. He was assassinated in March 1968, while standing on the second floor balcony of a hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee.