‘The journey is long and perilous, but our goal will be attained’

On February 18, 1957, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote to Henry J. Engler, Jr., dean of Loyola University New Orleans’s business school. King had risen to prominence leading the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, a triumph against racial segregation. His face was on the cover of Time magazine, and he had just been elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Yet, as the world awaited his next move, King’s mind was on the past actions of a Jesuit priest. “Dear Dr. Engler,” King typed, “Please copy from Father’s files some of his statements to the people involved in the last sugar-cane strike.” By “Father,” King meant Engler’s Loyola colleague Louis J. Twomey, sj (1905–1969), a labor priest known for his support of Black workers. King’s note is part of a newly discovered cache of letters revealing that Twomey ...