Between the Covers

Unbound. Letter dated 9 December 1956 to Chalmers thanking him for his reading of one of Braithwaite's poems at a public function where Chalmers presided as Master of Ceremonies. Braithwaite notes, "you communicate the spirit of it so convincingly, and with such felicity of phrasing that you remind me of the ecstasy I had known when I wrote it fifty-four years ago!" Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers was the pastor of New York's Broadway Tabernacle Congregational Church, a pacifist, and a civil rights activist. He helped organize the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, became chairman of The Scottsboro Defense Committee, and later was the single most determined figure in having them paroled or released. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged Chalmers, who taught King at the Boston University School of Theology, as an important influence in his intellectual development toward non-violence in his essay *My Pilgrimage to Non-Violence.* Folded as mailed, else about fine. A nice letter.

Item #78553