From the moment he arrived at Morehouse, King understood that his great passions—scholarship, religion, public speaking, and the pursuit of racial justice—could coalesce, even if he wasn’t sure how. He knew it because he saw how they came together in Mays. He also knew it because his professors challenged him to think critically and see old issues, including religion, in new ways. “During my student days at Morehouse,” King recalled, “I read Thoreau’s essay ‘Civil Disobedience’ for the first time. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I
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