202 Notes to Pages 54–58 Martin Luther King, Jr., 2: 28–31. Lischer explains why King elected to serve as a pastor rather than pursue a job as a professor: “Ebenezer had taught King that the basic unit of Christianity in the world is the congregation. Although he had absorbed the universal principle of liberalism, when the time came for him to embark upon a career, he turned again to the congregation as the only vehicle of redemption he knew. Perhaps he understood that Christianity was never meant to work in the lecture hall or at the level of abstract principles but, rather, among a community that is joined by race, family, neighborhood, and economics, but whose truest identity transcends all of these” (Lischer, The Preacher King, 74). Branch, Parting the Waters, 105–8. 2. Montgomery Advertiser, January 24, 1954. 3. Coretta Scott King claims “Three Dimensions” was the first sermon she heard King preach (Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 59). King also delivered a sermon with this title in September 1953 while serving at Ebenezer (“King Jr. to End Series of Summer Ser- mons; Ebenezer,” Atlanta Daily World, September 5, 1953). King bor- rowed the primary outline of “Three Dimensions” from Phillips Brooks’s sermon “The Symmetry of Life,” found in Brooks, Selected Sermons, 195– 206. King Jr., Stride toward Freedom, 17; King Jr., “The Dimensions of a Complete Life,” January 24, 1954, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 150–56. 4. Nesbitt and Randall to King, March 7, 1954, and King to Pulpit Committee, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, March 10, 1954, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 2: 256, 258. James Dombrowski recorded this in- cident in his diary on February 8, 1954 (Mss 566, Folder 4, Box 15, Dom- browski Papers). Virginia Durr to Marge Frantz, February 1954, in Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer, 64. 5. Alabama Tribune, April 2, 1954. 6. Jo Ann Robinson to Mayor Gayle, May 21, 1954, in Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, viii. 7. King Jr., “Going Forward by Going Backward,” April 4, 1954, in Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 6: 159–63. The sermon’s content paral- lels the body of a sermon he delivered five weeks earlier in Detroit (King Jr., “Rediscovering Lost Values,” ibid., 2: 248–56). King also delivered a version of this sermon on August 16, 1953, at Ebenezer Baptist Church. 8. King Jr., “Accepting Responsibility for Your Actions,” July 26, 1953, ibid., 6: 139–42. On the inside of the folder containing this sermon, King wrote: “ARYA: Preached at Dexter May 2, 1954.” 9. King Jr., “Acceptance Address at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,” May 2, 1954, ibid., 6: 164–67.