Dissertation of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1955)

Talk about your affirmative action degrees...

During his third year of doctoral work at Boston University, 
Martin Luther King wrote Crozer Theological Seminary’s George 
Davis, his former advisor, about his progress in graduate 
school. He disclosed that he had begun to research his 
dissertation and that the late Edgar Brightman, his first mentor 
at Boston, and his current dissertation advisor, L. Harold 
DeWolf, were both ‘‘quite impressed’’ with his course work. ‘‘So 
far, my Dissertation title is: ‘A comparison of the conception 
of God in the thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.’ 
I am finding the study quite fascinating. If there are no basic 
interruptions, I hope to complete it by the end of the coming 
summer’’ (Papers 2:224). Davis commended King on selecting ‘‘an 
excellent dissertation topic’’ and expressed his confidence that 
King would ‘‘do a good piece of work with it’’ (Papers 2:225).

King passed his final doctoral examination in February 1954, and 
his dissertation outline was approved by Boston University’s 
graduate school on 9 April, shortly before he accepted the call 
to pastor Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King’s letter of 
acceptance to Dexter’s congregation specified that he be 
‘‘granted an allowance of time to complete my work at Boston 
University,’’ though he would be ‘‘able to fill the pulpit at 
least once or twice per month.’’ He also asked that the church 
cover his expenses during the completion of his dissertation, 
‘‘including traveling expenses’’ (Papers 2:260).

King chose to focus his dissertation research on Tillich and 
Wieman due to their status as influential religious thinkers and 
as representatives of divergent views on the nature of God. 
King’s comparison of Tillich’s and Wieman’s concepts of God 
reflected his adherence to personalism, which proceeds from the 
belief that God possesses a personality and can therefore have a 
relationship with human beings. King’s analysis of Tillich’s and 
Wieman’s theological concepts as ‘‘unsatisfactory’’ and 
‘‘inadequate  a philosophical and religious world-views’’ 
followed from his belief that God was a living force, 
‘‘responsive to the deepest yearnings of the human heart; this 
God both evokes and answers prayer’’ (Papers 2:532; 533; 512). 
He found that both Wieman and Tillich rejected the conception of 
a personal God, which resulted in ‘‘a rejection of the 
rationality, goodness, and love of God in the full sense of the 
words. An impersonal ‘being-itself’ or ‘creative event’ cannot 
be rational or good, for these attributes are of personality’’ 
(Papers 2:506). In the end, King pointed out the two 
theologians’ views of God are not ‘‘basically sound’’ because 
they ‘‘render real religious experience impossible’’ (Papers 
2:532).

Recent scholarship by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers 
Project of the King Institute has revealed that as a student at 
Crozer and Boston, King frequently appropriated the words of 
other writers without proper attribution. Volumes I and II of 
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. have demonstrated that 
while his bibliographies contained the authors and books that he 
drew on in his own compositions, his papers often lacked the 
footnotes and quotation marks that identified his use of these 
sources in his text. His habit of plagiarizing others’ work, 
intentionally or not, can be found in the various drafts of his 
dissertation. King borrowed from several secondary sources 
without proper citation, including a dissertation written by 
fellow Crozer student Jack Boozer for DeWolf three years 
earlier, and a review of Tillich’s Systematic Theology written 
by one of King’s former professors.

King’s professors did not detect this pattern in his 
scholarship. After King submitted the first draft of his 
dissertation, DeWolf filed a report observing that he had sent 
his specific criticisms, ‘‘most of them formal or minor,’’ to 
the candidate. DeWolf reminded King to submit an abstract of the 
dissertation ‘‘early’’ to allow proper time for revision and to 
clearly set forth his thesis statement (Papers 2:333). That 
said, DeWolf projected that the finished version would be an 
‘‘excellent and useful scholarly achievement’’ (Papers 2:334). 
S. Paul Schilling, the dissertation’s second reader, approved 
the draft as well.

King turned in the final version of his dissertation by the 15 
April 1955 deadline, returning to Boston for his oral defense. 
Graduate faculty at Boston University voted to confer the PhD on 
King in May 1955; however, due to financial difficulties and 
Coretta Scott King’s pregnancy, he was unable to attend 
graduation.

Sources

Carson et al., ‘‘Martin Luther King, Jr., as Scholar: A 
Reexamination of His Theological Writings,’’ Journal of American 
History 78 (June 1991): 93–105.

Davis to King, 7 December 1953, in Papers 2:225–226.

DeWolf, First Reader’s Report, 26 February 1955, in Papers 
2:333–334.

Introduction, in Papers 1:49–50.

Introduction, in Papers 2:22–26.

King, ‘‘A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking 
of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,’’ 15 April 1955, in 
Papers 2:339–544.

King to Davis, 1 December 1953, in Papers 2:223–224.

King to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 14 April 1954, in Papers 
2:260.

King Papers Project, ‘‘The Student Papers of Martin Luther King, 
Jr.: A Summary Statement on Research,’’ Journal of American 
History 78 (June 1991): 23–31.

Schilling, Second Reader’s Report, 26 February 1955, in Papers 
2:334–335.

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