Signature in hymnal sets Minnesota woman on search for MLK's favorite hymn

My Aunt Mary Huey — choir director, church youth leader and daughter of a North Dakota pioneer Presbyterian minister — had an unusual hobby.

When she left her job at Hemphill Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1955, she was given a hymnal in which all the members of the congregation had signed their name on their favorite hymn. Mary treasured that book the rest of her life, and took to asking others to sign it, leaving page after page with signatures scrawled across the book's worn pages.

For 25 years, Mary led youth programs and directed choirs at Presbyterian churches in Chicago, Philadelphia, Fort Worth and Pasadena, Calif. But in 1965, on a sabbatical to prepare for a church assignment overseas, she enrolled at Union Theological Seminary and its School of Sacred Music in New York City.

On Jan. 23, 1966, Mary attended Sunday services at her favorite church in the city, Riverside. With a passion for social justice and music, she had grown to love the historic Gothic church in Manhattan known for its liberal theology and activism.

This day was special. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was giving his fifth sermon from the Riverside pulpit — "Transformed Nonconformist." (A year later, King made history at the same church when he broke with the Johnson administration by opposing the Vietnam War.)

Mary took careful notes as the famous civil rights leader preached. She quoted King as saying slavery would not have lasted 244 years if the church had not sanctioned it. Her notes quote King: "The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence."

After the service, Mary joined others waiting for the opportunity to meet King. When her chance came, she told him about her hobby and asked him for his favorite hymn.

For King, who was raised on gospel music in the Baptist Church and steeped in Negro spirituals, this surely was not an easy call.

Mary didn't have her hymnal with her that day, so she had King sign his name on a piece of paper. When she got home, she tucked the paper with "Best Wishes Martin Luther King" on hymn No. 77, the well-known Protestant standard "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past" by Isaac Watts.

After Mary's death in 1999, the hymnal came to me. My dear aunt, just like her four brothers, was an extraordinary letter writer, note taker and diarist, and I received boxes of all three. When I pored over the contents, I came across Mary's notes taken that Sunday in 1966. I looked again at the hymnal and wondered: Was the Isaac Watts hymn really King's favorite?

My search began.

Beyond 'Precious Lord'

The hymn often cited as King's favorite, "Precious Lord," was sung by Mahalia Jackson at the March on Washington in 1963 and at his funeral in 1968. It was also sung by Aretha Franklin at the dedication of the MLK monument in Washington in 2011.

But the Thomas Dorsey hymn wasn't in her Presbyterian hymnal, and Mary wasn't the kind of woman to arbitrarily put King's signature in her book. So King must have expressed a liking for "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past."

Lewis Baldwin, a religious studies professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has written extensively on King's cultural roots, including the role that music played in his movement and ministry. Baldwin said that "Precious Lord" was King's favorite gospel song.

In "Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68," author Taylor Branch writes about King's last words at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Bandleader and jazz tenor saxophonist Ben Branch (no relation) from Chicago was to perform that night for King. Just before he was shot, the civil rights leader said: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

But Baldwin also said Watts' hymns were part of Southern black Baptist Protestantism.

And while King clearly had many favorites, there is strong evidence of his attachment to "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past."

At least twice during the 1950s, he quoted liberally from that hymn in sermons — once at Detroit's Second Baptist Church and once at his very own Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. Before King's burial in April 1968, the Morehouse College Glee Club, of which King had been a member, sang "O God, Our Help in Ages Past."

At the Dexter sermon called "Creating the Abundant Life," King told of God being "the same yesterday, today and forever" and then quoting nearly exactly from the hymn's lyrics, "the God who has been our help in ages past and our hope for years to come, our shelter in the time of storm and our eternal home."

In a sermon on Gandhi at Dexter, King singled out another Watts hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." "It's a beautiful hymn. I think if there is any hymn of the Christian church that I would call a favorite hymn, it is this one."

Many favorites

In fact, I found that there are nearly 20 hymns considered to be King favorites.

In her autobiography "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.," his widow, Coretta Scott King, tells of how important sacred music was in keeping her husband's spirits up when his life was threatened or when he was in jail. Indeed, music — gospel and protest songs — played a crucial role in galvanizing the entire civil rights movement.

Jevetta Steele, a member of the Twin Cities musical family the Steeles, said gospel music was essential to a movement that brought together old and young, rich and poor, black and white.

"It was the one thing we had in common — our love for Jesus," she said.

After he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964, King and a group of aides, including Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy, sang "freedom songs in beautiful harmony," Coretta wrote, including "Were You There When They Crucified my Lord" and "Balm in Gilead."

As a child who grew up the son of a minister, King believed that singing hymns was an important part of his life. His father, often called "Daddy King," said Martin, at age 6, sang hymns from memory, Coretta wrote.

"We took him to a Baptist convention about that time," the elder King said. "His mother played the piano and M.L. sang his favorite gospel song, 'I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus.' When he finished, people were shouting and crying. But the boy didn't get puffed up, he just went and sat down, very quiet and humble."

My fond memories of Mary only grow as the years go by. After she left New York, she went to Lebanon to teach English and music at a Christian girls' school and then returned to marry a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Robert Boshen. My big regret is that I didn't ask her more about her incredible life and more about the Rev. Martin Luther King.

Pamela Huey • 612-673-7044