THE PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

This second of a projected 14 volumes of Martin Luther King's collected works covers the period from his postgraduate education at Boston University's School of Theology through the end of his first year as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. (his year-end report notes accomplishments ranging from carpeting the church's auditorium to registering voters). Correspondence, academic papers (and in his introduction Carson confronts head on the issue of King's plagiarism), sermons, published and unpublished writings are all included, reflecting the young man's developing thoughts about theology, ethics, and the role of the Baptist minister in his church. All the texts are annotated, and some original documents are reproduced. The longest work here is King's dissertation on the concept of God in the writings of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman, a concept that differed from his own belief in a personal God. The volume leaves the young minster on the eve of a watershed in his own life, in the life of his people, and in the life of America as a whole: the Montgomery bus boycott.