The Most Segregated Hour: Context Matters


“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America” (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.).

     I’ve heard several versions of this quote attributed to Martin Luther King over the years and because there were so many variations, I decided to research the exact wording as well as the source of this quote. What prompted King to utter this sentence? What was the context? Was it written like “Letter from Birmingham Jail” or “Why We Can’t Wait,” or was it a speech like his famous “I Have a Dream” or “Mountaintop” speeches? Something else?

     In my mini-research, I learned that in 1968 on the Dick Cavett Show, James Baldwin attributes at least part of the “segregated hour” quote to Malcolm X:

I know as Malcolm X once put it: “the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday.”

     Aside from Baldwin’s statement, I could not find a source where Malcolm X said or wrote about the “most segregated hour in America.” And I don’t think it much matters if Martin spoke it first or if Martin was influenced by what Malcolm said. They did know each other and spoke with each other, after all. 

     I discovered the exact sentence quoted above in the transcript of an interview MLK gave on NBC’s Meet the Press on April 17, 1960. King appeared on the show to address the “legal and moral justifications for the student sit-ins and the federal government’s responsibility” for protecting them. 

     The people on the panel of the press conference-like interview were Frank Van Der Linden who was a White House correspondent for major newspapers, columnist, and author; Elisabeth May Adams Craig who served as the Washington correspondent for the Gannett newspaper syndicate and wrote the column “Inside in Washington,”; Anthony Lewis, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times; and Lawrence Edmund Spivak who created the radio program “Meet the Press,” and produced the television “spin off” for some years. Ned Brooks served as the moderator for this specific interview.

     King’s famous response was prompted by a question from van der Linden, a conservative reporter, about how many white people were members of King’s church, Dexter Street Baptist in Atlanta, Georgia. When King said his church had no white members, van der Linden responded, “Well sir, you said integration is the law of the land, and it’s morally right, whereas segregation is morally wrong, and the president should do something about it. Do you mean the president should issue an order that the schools and the churches and the stores should all be integrated?”

     The transcript doesn’t say but I imagine King must have paused for a New York minute to contemplate how van der Linden didn’t seem to distinguish how public spaces like schools and stores differ from religious spaces. Nevertheless, this is King’s response – the familiar first sentence and the part I’ve never seen quoted before. The last part is why I imagine the pause after van der Linden’s questions.

“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America. I definitely think the Christian church should be integrated, and any church that stands against integration and that has a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness. But this is something that the Church will have to do itself. I don’t think church integration will come through legal processes. I might say that my church is not a segregating church. It’s segregated but not segregating. It would welcome white members.”

     I like how King distinguishes “segregated” from “segregating.” King’s point, I think, is that churches are sacred spaces that should welcome whomever walks through their doors because that’s the Christian thing to do. Churches answer to a higher law than the Supreme Court.

     King’s statement was the end of the interview. There were no more questions asked. However, it’s clear that, unlike Malcolm X through James Baldwin, King was responding to a specific attack question about Christian America and he responded brilliantly without a script.

     If you’re wondering about my characterization of van der Linden’s question as an attack, read the other questions he asked. I looked for a video of the Meet the Press episode for you to watch but could only find these two interesting ones:





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