“The Gospel I Will Preach” 41    a major impact on the language and themes that became staples of King’s 10 preaching and thought. One of the criticisms King often leveled against the traditional black church was its tendency to deal almost exclusively with spiritual matters while not consistently addressing social challenges. In a Crozer Seminary assignment, King argued that modern preaching must “deal with great social problems,” adding that sermons should help people “adjust to the complexities of modern society.” During Tuesday chapel services, Mays modeled precisely this type of engagement with the great issues of the day. He regularly addressed topics that were pertinent to the black com- munity and thus should be on the minds and hearts of any Morehouse 11 graduate. Mays regularly considered issues of concern to the African American community, including efforts to gain voting rights. In his first article for the Pittsburgh Courier, published in June 1946, Mays hailed a recent vic- tory in an effort to secure the ballot for blacks in Georgia. He also issued a challenge to his readers, calling southern blacks to pay the necessary price required for substantive racial change in the region. While some expected justice to be a given, Mays prescribed long-term commitment and struggle as prerequisites for African Americans’ achievement of full voting rights. Part of Mays’s mission was to develop “Morehouse Men” who would become the vanguard of the new black leadership. Through hard work, discipline, and sacrifice, these emerging leaders would usher in a new day for African Americans. After four years under Mays’s tutelage, King understood that substantive social change would require vigorous effort. This was a lesson Mays wanted every Morehouse graduate to not 12 only understand but embody. Mays combined his admonition for commitment and sacrifice with a broad value-based critique of racist politicians. He was quite willing to chastise reactionary white leaders by name, suggesting that their fight to “keep the Negro a third-rate citizen” was a battle against the ideals of the United States and the teachings of Jesus. Mays’s strategy was to chal- lenge the supposed authority of racist government officials by appealing to a higher law found in the Constitution and the Bible. He consistently appealed to timeless moral principles to suggest that “evil carries within its structure its own self-destruction.” African Americans had embodied