A biographer-historian, Taylor Branch, describes this appeal: "His listeners responded to the passion beneath the ideas, to the bottomless joy and pain that turned the heat into rhythm and the rhythm into music. King was controlled. He never shouted. But he preached like someone who wanted to shout, and this gave him an electrifying hold over the congregation. Though still a boy to many of his older listeners, he had the commanding air of a burning sage."
