Martin Luther King, Jr. in Little Rock

On Sunday, April 28, 1963, fifty-one years ago this month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made a rare appearance in Little Rock to deliver a sermon at First Missionary Baptist Church at Seventh and Gaines Streets. The church was celebrating its 118^th anniversary and its pastor, Rev. Roland Smith, was a founding member of King’s civil rights organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King delivered his familiar “Knock at Midnight” sermon to a packed house of 600 people. He warned that there were three types of churches that failed to address the pressing questions of the day: those that were merely social clubs, those that were more concerned with making a noise in the aisles rather than taking action, and those who worried only about “men’s souls but not about the slums that corrupt them.” I’m John Kirk, of the UALR History Department, and this has been an Arkansas Moment.