He was a key figure in historic civil rights events taking place in Mississippi, including the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in of 1963 and the Freedom Summer project in 1964.
At this critical juncture of the civil rights movement, historian John Dittmer described King as “the most visible white activist in the Mississippi movement.”[1] As Tougaloo College chaplain, King collaborated with many of the key figures in the civil rights movement, including Bob Moses and others from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Medgar Evers of the NAACP, James Farmer and David Dennis of CORE, Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and activists from the Mississippi COFO (Council of Federated Organizations), including Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, and John Salter.
As a youngster growing up in historic Vicksburg, King was deeply moved by stories of the deprivation his family suffered during what was called the “Yankee torture” of the besieged city near the end of the Civil War.
He never considered going to any college other than Millsaps, where, as a student, he was to witness firsthand the depth of white resistance to the Supreme Court’s landmark desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
After graduating from Millsaps in 1958, King left Mississippi to attend Boston University School of Theology, where he became a regular participant in interdisciplinary meetings of religious, pacifist, and civil rights activists.
In December 1958, he met Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, starting a friendship that led to his involvement in the planning of the 1960 civil rights sit-ins with Rev.
He would later describe this as “a practice that manifested itself in occasional donations of used clothing or holiday baskets of food or a comfortable paternalism that allowed many whites to believe that their duties—as Christians or otherwise—toward their black neighbors had been satisfied.”[1] In March 1960, Ed King took leave from his seminary studies to volunteer in Montgomery, Alabama, where, on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, he helped organize secret interracial meetings where black students could mingle with white ministers and students from Huntingdon College.
He had made it clear to the Fellowship that he didn't want to take part in sit-ins or other activities that could result in his arrest—and bring notoriety that would prevent him from becoming the pastor of a white church in Mississippi.
"[4] White Methodist church leaders in Mississippi told the Kings that their son was under the influence of liberal Communist teachers who had infiltrated the seminary at Boston University.
Neighbors and fellow church members shunned the couple.”[2] A second arrest in Montgomery followed on June 7, this time the result of a deliberate action planned by King and attorney Fred Grey.
The arrests and King’s growing involvement in civil rights activities effectively ended any hopes the young minister might have had of serving a white Methodist church in his home state.
With their hopes of a future in Mississippi in doubt after his arrests, Ed King and his wife Jeannette, a Jackson native, considered putting down roots in Massachusetts.
But events unfolding around the admission of James Meredith to Ole Miss inspired the couple to return to Mississippi to take part in a growing civil rights movement that was now centered in their home state.
Medgar Evers was more direct about the opportunity: “You have to come back because we need you, because this, my friend, is your calling.”[5] Any resentment over hiring a white Southern man as the chaplain of a predominately black student body was deflected by King’s history as a civil rights activist who was willing to put himself at risk.
[4] As chaplain, King expected that he would provide background support for student activists, but once again he was propelled into a more active role by events that made Tougaloo the unofficial capital of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
On May 28, he and a small group of Tougaloo students and faculty drove 10 miles to downtown Jackson, joining multiracial demonstrators attempting to dine at a whites-only lunch counter in the Woolworth's store near the Governor’s mansion.
As one of several demonstrations planned with guidance from Medgar Evers of the NAACP, the sit-in was a small-scale challenge to the Jim Crow custom of denying black Americans their most basic rights.
King had been assigned the role of “spotter,” so he could avoid arrest and provide regular, live telephone reports to John Salter and Evers, who were monitoring the action from the Jackson NAACP office.
Wearing his ministerial clerical collar (often called a bullet-proof vest by members of SNCC), King stood behind three black students, Anne Moody, Pearlina Lewis, and Memphis Norman, who had volunteered to sit at the lunch counter.
He then phoned Tougaloo College's president, Dr. A.D. Beittel, who in turn asked national church leaders to help bring Woolworth’s corporate executives into the conversation.
A few weeks later—and just six days after the assassination of Medgar Evers in Jackson—Ed King and John Salter were injured in a suspicious car crash—victims of what official police records called a traffic accident.
Over 80,000 black Mississippians participated in the mock election, casting votes at local churches, beauty parlors, and a handful of black-owned service stations across the state.
To extend its reach to the local black population, the project set up Freedom Houses to shelter volunteers and established community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi.
Historian John Dittmer observed that by the summer of 1964, Ed King had become "the most visible white activist in the Mississippi [civil rights] movement, and he paid a heavy price for honoring his convictions.
"[7] King’s focus was on getting white moderates across the state involved while preventing an eruption of racial violence in response to the federally-mandated integration of public schools scheduled for the fall of 1964.
Ed King was elected as National Committeeman and a member of the MFDP leadership, along with Victoria Gray, Lawrence Guyot, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Aaron Henry.
In an effort to defuse the controversy, party leaders, acting on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson offered the MFDP two at-large seats to be filled by Aaron Henry and Ed King.
"[3] Humphrey rejected the proposal, insisting that President Johnson was adamantly opposed to allowing an “illiterate woman” (Hamer) to speak on the floor of the Democratic Convention.
King appears as a character in All the Way, a Robert Schenkkan play depicting the first year of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, with an emphasis on events surrounding the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.