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the aftermath of King’s assassination: in Washington, for example, where 11 were killed, 1,113 were injured, and $24 million worth of property was destroyed; or Chicago, with 9 killed, 500 injured, and $11 million in damage.
    On Tuesday afternoon, as King was buried in Atlanta, black Boston paused to watch the televised services from the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the sweltering three-and-a-half-hour march through Atlanta’s streets, and, finally, the interment under a marble monument inscribed: “Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty I’m Free At Last.” Coretta King’s haunted eyes, Daddy King’s bowed gray head, Ralph Abernathy’s cracked voice brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. And once stirred up, those feelings wouldn’t die, bringing with them memories of soft Sunday evenings years before when, after the Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings at Union Methodist, she and her girlfriends would stroll up Shawmut Avenue to the Twelfth Baptist Church.
    They weren’t all that religious. What drove them up the avenue was gospel—those throbbing hymns which blended a heavy dose of spirituality with more than a pinch of sensuality. They couldn’t get gospel at Union Methodist, an outpost of staid respectability, so they sought it instead at the more soulful Baptist church.
    Usually they had to sit through a boring anthem or two by Coretta Scott, an earnest soprano from the New England Conservatory of Music, who was often on the program because she was the fiancée of the young student minister who preached at Twelfth Baptist through most of 1952 and 1953. When Martin King had come to Boston University’s School of Theology in September 1951, his father told him to look up his old friend and Baptist colleague Dr. William Hester, and soon Martin was preaching most of the Sunday-evening sermons at Dr. Hester’s church.
    Even then, Martin was a commanding figure in the pulpit. The Reverend Mike Haynes, Dr. Hester’s assistant, would normally have delivered those Sunday-evening sermons. For a time he was miffed at the preference given King, but soon he recognized that “Martin was completely out of my league.”
    Rachel too was a bit awed by the young student minister. She didn’t talk to him much—he was twenty-three in 1952 and she was only fifteen—but she found his preaching “spellbinding,” his cool assurance “impressive.” She and her friends agreed he was a real “Bougie,” a middle-class boy destined forgreat things. When those great things came to pass, she identified even further with King. Every time he came back to Boston, she went to hear him. Several times he appeared at Union Methodist seeking funds for his activities and on each occasion Rachel gave more than she could really afford, partly out of nostalgia for those evenings on Shawmut Avenue, partly out of pride in her association with this great man. She followed his career closely in the papers and on TV, and told her friends he was the greatest black man of his generation (just as Jack Kennedy was the greatest white man). After his death, she kept his memory alive in her apartment.
    Rachel’s walls were covered with inspirational messages: “There are no limits on God’s ability to make things right in my life,” “Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins,” “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” interspersed with less reverent slogans, such as “God bless this lousy apartment.” But now King became a principal theme in this display. On one wall was a bronze plaque of the dead prophet, on another a four-color portrait of him, and on her coffee table a memorial candle bearing on its circular shade an excerpt from his “I Have a Dream” speech.
    Not everyone in the family shared Rachel’s admiration for King. One of the skeptics was her younger brother Arnold Walker, who shared many of the reservations then common among Northern blacks. The Black Panthers had