The Pulitzer Prize winning biographer David Garrow tells a fascinating story from the life

of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

On January 27, 1956, just a month after King was elected to the Montgomery Improvement

Association, which was the organization that was started in response to roses' parks

arrest, King was already a month in at a breaking point.

He thought that the boycott would not last more than a few weeks, but as it dragged on,

it became clearer that the city was not going to budge.

And then he started to receive death threats.

On January 26, the day before, he was jailed or arrested for driving 30 miles per hour

in a 25-mile per hour zone and then jailed overnight.

Upon his release on the 27th, he came home to a whole new round of anonymous phone calls

and death threats with harm to his family.

And that night, as you can imagine, he could not sleep out of fear for his own body and

that of his wife and children.

And we got up and went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee and deal with his

anxiety.

Years later in a sermon, he said this about that fateful night.

And I bowed down over that cup of coffee.

I never will forget it.

I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night.

I said, Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right.

But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now.

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