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REFLECTIONS FROM CURRENT
MOREHOUSE FACULTY AND STAFF
KING EDITION
THE MAROON TIGER
6
KING'S DEATH GAVE DEAN CARTER HIS LIFE’S MISSION
BY RON THOMAS, MAROON TIGER ADVISER
D r. Lawrence Carter was living in Boston when
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Carter’s reason for being in that city: his deep ad
miration for the greatest civil rights figure of the
20th century.
Carter, the only dean the Martin Luther King
Jr. International Chapel has had since it opened in
1979, was a 10th grader in Columbus, Ohio, when
he first heard King preach in 1957. He thought it
was a good sermon, “but I was not blown away,” he
said. They chatted afterward, and King asked Car
ter to consider going to Morehouse College.
A family friend talked him out of that and
instead he attended Virginia University of Lynch
burg, where he heard King preach again in 1961.
This time, his sermon was unforgettable.
“I have never heard in my life a speech before
then or after to this day to equal it, not even the T
Have a Dream’ speech in Washington,” Carter said.
“The speech had four crescendos and four times he
lifted us out of our seats so that 4,000 people rose
and screamed ‘Yes!!!!’I have never heard oratory
with the power and the strength to match it.
“I was so moved by the speech that I ran all
the way back to my dormitory, called my mother
and I said I’m transferring to Morehouse College. I
knew I would never be the same.”
His mother said no because she was already
working at least three jobs to afford Lynchburg’s
tuition, and Morehouse would be more expensive.
Carter was stunned that he could not do something
“that I thought was so clearly the will of God for
me,” but he secretly vowed to do the second-best
thing: “I will get all of the rest of my education at
Boston University, where I can be taught by some
of the same professors who taught him.”
Boston University, where King had graduated
from seminary school and had gotten his doctorate
degree, accepted Carter in 1963. Hence, he and his
future wife, Marva, were in Boston when King was
killed.
It was tragic irony that on April 4,1968, they
were chatting during intermission at a play on cam
pus about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
when Carter saw an arm tap one of his professors,
Dr. Robert Luccock, on the shoulder. The arm be
longed to Dr. Walter G. Muelder, the dean of the
School of Theology, then the two men walked out
side the auditorium, but Carter could still see them
and a worried expression on Muelder’s face.
He interrupted them, asked if something was
wrong, and Muelder told him that King had been
shot in Memphis.
“I can feel the emotion, even now,” Carter
recalled two weeks ago. “It just came up in me. I
froze. It literally kind of shook me, and when I
composed myself I looked at him and said, ‘Is he all
right?’And he said, ‘Thirty minutes ago, he died.’
“Oh God. I couldn’t speak. I turned and I went
back in and I got Marva by the hand and I just
asked Marva to come. She had no idea what hap
pened and we kept walking out of the (student)
union to the great staircase going down. And on
the way down as I held her hand, I said, ‘They
killed him.’”
At that point, in his King Chapel office, tears
slowly rolled down Carter’s cheeks. He paused,
then continued, recalling that he and Marva next
walked to the campus’ Marsh Chapel.
“We took seats on the back pew,” Carter said,
“and the only thing we could see was the great
stained glass window of Jesus in ascension above
the four doctors of the church - Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John - behind the altar. And sitting there
in the silence, holding hands, I, with tears coming
down my face, I prayed out loud: ‘Lord, help me do
something significant for Martin Luther King Jr.
before I close my eyes.’”
Fifty years later, Dean Lawrence Carter is still
striving to complete that mission.