On April 10, 1963, as Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and their fellow leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference began the second week of their historic Birmingham campaign, King wrote to a colleague of Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ, asking him to thank the Jesuit for his allyship.
The civil-rights leader’s letter was directed to Henry J. Engler Jr., then the acting dean of Loyola University New Orleans School of Business Administration, who worked closely with Twomey’s Institute of Industrial Relations at Loyola. It’s not clear how King knew Engler, but he had known Twomey since 1954 and had written to him many times.1 On this, the public commemoration of King’s birthday, I am sharing for the first time the full text of his brief April 10, 1963, letter, with commentary.
King began his letter,
Dear Dean Engler,
Please thank Father for his notes to the Southern Jesuits. We need prayers.
By “notes to the Southern Jesuits,” King was referring to Father Twomey’s social-justice newsletter Christ’s Blueprint for the South. Although the newsletter was officially for Jesuits only, Twomey had long been sharing it with the civil-rights leader.
King’s praise for the Blueprint indicates that he was grateful for Twomey’s remarks in the March 1963 issue, where Twomey offered readers free printed copies of King’s address to the January 1963 Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago. Twomey wrote, “We were privileged to hear this address, and it was among the most outstanding we have ever listened to. From this great Negro Protestant leader, we Catholics can learn much about the practical implications of justice and charity.”
The words, “We need prayers,” coming after the reference to the Southern Jesuits, show that King recognized that the prayers of Catholics were as necessary to his work as the prayers of his fellow Protestants. A few days later, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he would commend the Catholic leaders who had integrated Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.
King’s letter continued:
Fred Shuttlesworth sends his regards to his friends Father, Vic, and Ray.
Have you seen his pledge? A blessed work indeed.
“Father” is Father Twomey, “Vic” is Victor Bussie, the Louisiana AFL-CIO leader known for his support of civil rights, and “Ray” is Ray Ariatti, who worked closely with both Twomey and Bussie.
The pledge that King referenced was Shuttlesworth’s historic nonviolence pledge, displayed in the image above.
King signed his letter,
Pray for us.
Rev. M.L. King, Jr.
Two days later, on Good Friday, King would be arrested. Four days after that, he would write his Letter from Birmingham Jail, addressing moderate white clergymen who had urged an end to his nonviolent protests.
At a time when many clergy, including Twomey’s friend Father Albert S. Foley, SJ, were criticizing King and his fellow members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King knew that he could rely on Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ, for support and prayers.
As I wrote earlier, I continue to ask your prayers that the Lord rearranges the circumstances of my life so that I may resume work on my biography of Father Twomey. Thank you and God bless you.
After Twomey’s death in 1969, Engler took possession of King’s letters to Twomey. In the late 1970s, he shared retyped copies of them, as well as King’s letters to himself, with Father John Payne, SJ. Payne has in turn shared them with me. These letters have never been published anywhere except in the excerpts that I myself have shared.
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