The statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is seen unveiled from scaffolding during the soft opening of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, Monday, Aug. 22, 2011. The memorial will be dedicated Sunday, Aug. 28.Martin Luther King, who is being honored with a 30-foot memorial in Washington, D.C., alongside other giants in U.S. history, once interviewed to be pastor of First Baptist Church in Chattanooga.
But the man who went on to become an icon in the nation’s civil rights movement and deliver one of the most stirring speeches of all time wasn’t hired.
“Maybe it was the Lord’s will,” said James Mapp, former longtime president of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County NAACP. Mapp is writing a history of blacks in Chattanooga and the civil rights movement.
If King had come to Chattanooga, he might not have been at the forefront of the civil rights movement, said Mapp, and he might not have become the first black to have a monument on the National Mall. King’s memorial spans four acres and is between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
King interviewed to become minister at First Baptist Church on East Eighth Street in 1953, Mapp said.