This is fascinating. I’ve never read it before. In 1950, Martin Luther King took a course called “The Religious Development of Personality,” and wrote an autobiographical work about the various religious stages of his own early life. The professor marked it “Excellent.” Here’s an excerpt:

“I had always been the questioning and precocious type. At the age of thirteen, I shocked my Sunday School class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. From the age of thirteen on doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly. At the age of fifteen I entered college and more and more could I see a gap between what I had learned in Sunday School and what I was learning in college. This conflict continued until I studied a course in Bible in which I came to see that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape.

“One or two incidents happened in my late childhood and early adolescence that had tremendous effect on my religious development. The First was the death of my grandmother when I was about nine years old. I was particularly hurt by this incident mainly because of the extreme love I had for her. As stated above, she assisted greatly in raising all of us. It was after this incident for the first time that I talked at any length on the doctrine of immortality. My parents attempted to explain it to me and I was assured that somehow my grandmother still lived. I guess this is why today I am such a strong believer in personal immortality

“The second incident happened when I was about six years of age. From about the age of three up until this time I had had a white playmate who was about my age. We always felt free to play our childhood games together… At the age of six we both entered school–separate schools of course. I remember how our friendship began to break as soon as we entered school, of course this was not my desire but his. The climax came when he told me one day that his father had demanded that he would play with me no more. I never will forget what a great shock this was to me.

“I immediately asked my parents about the motive behind such a statement. We were at the diner table when the situation was discussed, and here for the first time I was made aware of the existence of a race problem. I had never been conscious of it before. As my parents discussed some of the tragedies that had resulted from this problem and some of the insults they themselves had confronted on account of it I was greatly shocked, and from that moment on I was determined to hate every white person.

“As I grew older and older this feeling continued to grow. My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white [man], but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. At this point the religious element came in. The question arose in my mind, how could I love a race of people [who] hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in my mind for a number of years.

“I did not conquer this anti-white feeling until I entered college and came in contact with white students through working in interracial organizations.”