At the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, SBTS remembers MLK visit; Williams writes about ongoing need for racial reconciliation

Communications Staff — August 27, 2013

Henlee Barnette, Martin Luther King Jr., Nolan Howington and Allen W. Graves talk after King received a copy of Barnette’s "Introduction to Christian Ethics" during a visit to Southern Seminary in 1961.

August 28 is the 50th anniversary of  the March on Washington, the 1963 large-scale rally that advocated for civil and economic rights of American-Americans in the United States.

Fifty-two years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Southern Seminary to give the 1961 Julius Brown Gay Lecture on Christian Ethics. Audio from King’s visit is available at the James P. Boyce Archives and Special Collections website: King’s address, “The Church on the Frontier of Racial Tension,” pronounced a call for church leaders to accept the responsibility of confronting the moral evil of segregation in the South and take the lead in moving American society toward integration. He also lectured in an ethics class. Archives also includes an article from the Review & Expositor by former Southern Seminary professor Henlee Barnette reflecting on King’s visit. Baptist Press recently referenced the visit in an article about Southern Baptists and reconciliation. And, two years ago, Towers published a special edition about the 50th anniversary of King’s visit to the seminary.

Jarvis Williams, associate professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Seminary, recently wrote about the March on Washinton, issuing a call for gospel-centered racial reconciliation, available here.

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