Ralph Edwin King Jr. (September 20, 1936 – July 4, 2026), better known as Ed King, was a United Methodist minister, civil rights activist and educator. He was a key figure in historic civil rights events taking place in Mississippi, including the Jackson Woolworth's sit-in of 1963 and the Freedom Summer project in 1964. King held the position of chaplain and dean of students, 1963–1967, at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. At this critical juncture of the civil rights movement, historian John Dittmer described King as "the most visible white activist in the Mississippi movement."
As Tougaloo College chaplain, King collaborated with many of the key figures in the civil rights movement, including Bob Moses and others from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Medgar Evers of the NAACP, James Farmer and David Dennis of CORE, Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and activists from the Mississippi COFO (Council of Federated Organizations), including Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, and John Salter.
King was also a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a member of the Democratic National Committee, and a delegate to three Democratic National Conventions. He and other surviving MFDP delegates were honored at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston on the 40th anniversary of their efforts to end racial discrimination in the Democratic party.
Early life King was born on September 20, 1936, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Ralph Edwin King Sr. and Julia Wilma Tucker King. His father, whose family came from West Virginia and Louisiana, was an engineer with the Mississippi River Commission. His mother's family had deep roots in the antebellum history of Mississippi. King's great-grandfather had served under General Robert E. Lee, and his grandfather, J. W. Tucker, was sheriff of Warren County, Mississippi.
As a youngster growing up in historic Vicksburg, King was deeply moved by stories of the deprivation his family suffered during what was called the "Yankee torture" of the besieged city near the end of the Civil War. King spent many hours at the Vicksburg battleground, reflecting on the great costs of war. While still in his teens, he was drawn to pacifism and became an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. Later, he recalled that pacifism came to him much earlier than more progressive attitudes about race.
A good but not overly distinguished student, King was never subjected to standardized testing until his senior year at Carr Central High School. Suffering a sinus infection while taking the SAT test, he was convinced he had done poorly and would never be admitted to Millsaps College, a popular destination for high achievers. "Two weeks later I learned I had won a scholarship," King said, "having probably placed second or third in the state."
Education Millsaps College (1954–1958) While still in high school, King attended church youth meetings at Millsaps College, a Methodist liberal arts school in Jackson. He never considered going to any college other than Millsaps, where, as a student, he was to witness firsthand the depth of white resistance to the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
As an undergraduate at Millsaps, King attended all-white Citizens' Councils meetings and was dismayed to see how white moderates were forced into silence. He also participated in interracial meetings at nearby Tougaloo College, where he met Medgar Evers and other prominent black civil rights leaders. Other important influences for King at Millsaps were sociology chair Ernst Borinski (a refugee from Nazi Germany), vocal critic of segregation George Maddox, and philosophy chair Robert Bergmark.
Boston University (1958–1963) After graduating from Millsaps in 1958, King left Mississippi to attend Boston University School of Theology, where he became a regular participant in interdisciplinary meetings of religious, pacifist, and civil rights activists.
In December 1958, he met Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, starting a friendship that led to his involvement in the planning of the 1960 civil rights sit-ins with Rev. Jim Lawson of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It was in Montgomery in March 1960 that Ed King was first arrested for acts of civil disobedience.
King received two degrees from Boston University: Master of Divinity (1961) and Master of Sacred Theology (1963).
Other education King also attended the University of Michigan (summer 1956) and Harvard Divinity School (on a Merrill Fellowship, 1966).
Activism Roots of dissent Like the majority of middle-class white Southerners of his era, King was raised to embrace a noblesse oblige attitude toward blacks. He would later describe this as "a practice that manifested itself in occasional donations of used clothing or holiday baskets of food or a comfortable paternalism that allowed many whites to believe that their duties—as Christians or otherwise—toward their black neighbors had been satisfied."
Early arrests In March 1960, King took leave from his seminary studies to volunteer in Montgomery, Alabama, where, on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, he helped organize secret interracial meetings where black students could mingle with white ministers and students from Huntingdon College. At this point, King preferred to work behind the scenes, building bridges between blacks and whites. He had made it clear to the Fellowship that he did not want to take part in sit-ins or other activities that could result in his arrest—and bring notoriety that would prevent him from becoming the pastor of a white church in Mississippi. But the course of events led in another direction.
While attending a lunch-time meeting at the black-owned Regal Cafe, King was arrested along with 20 other people—including Rev. Ralph Abernathy—by police targeting activists affiliated with the SCLC. The local press played up the presence of "northern agitators" at the restaurant, including a young minister from Boston. Represented in court by civil rights attorneys Fred Grey and Clifford Durr, all of the arrested were found guilty of "disturbing the peace." Native white southerners, Durr and his wife convinced King that the arrest and imprisonment of white ministers would be of great benefit to the civil rights movement.
When the national media picked up on the story, repercussions from the arrest were felt by King's family in Vicksburg, who were horrified to see a photo of their son on the Today show. Years later, King wrote, "My father was calm but angry as he condemned my foolishness and the people who had 'misled' me."
White Methodist church leaders in Mississippi told the Kings that their son was under the influence of liberal Communist teachers who had infiltrated the seminary at Boston University. Others in the community believed King's parents were also culpable. "Although his parents did not share King's beliefs and remained segregationists themselves, they were the subject of attacks by the Citizens' Councils and the John Birch Society. Neighbors and fellow church members shunned the couple." A second arrest in Montgomery followed on June 7, this time the result of a deliberate action planned by King and attorney Fred Grey. King invited Rev. Elroy Embry, a black Methodist clergyman, to dine with him at the Plantation Dining Room in the Jefferson Davis Hotel, where the younger man was staying. Alerted to the meeting, the police arrested the two ministers, both of whom were subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct and trespassing. King and Embry were each sentenced to two weeks of service on a prison work gang. (A local newspaper published a photo of King wearing the striped work clothing routinely issued to prisoners.) The arrests and King's growing involvement in civil rights activities effectively ended any hopes the young minister might have had of serving a white Methodist church in his home state.
Tougaloo College With their hopes of a future in Mississippi in doubt after his arrests, King and his wife Jeannette, a Jackson native, considered putting down roots in Massachusetts. But events unfolding around the admission of James Meredith to Ole Miss inspired the couple to return to Mississippi to take part in a growing civil rights movement that was now centered in their home state.
In 1962, Ernst Borinski alerted King that the chaplaincy of Tougaloo College was vacant and urged him to apply for the post. Medgar Evers was more direct about the opportunity: "You have to come back because we need you, because this, my friend, is your calling."
Any resentment over hiring a white Southern man as the chaplain of a predominately black student body was deflected by King's history as a civil rights activist who was willing to put himself at risk. His arrests for defying Jim Crow laws made him a relevant candidate: "I couldn't have done it [become Chaplain] if I had not had a prison record," King later wrote.
As chaplain, King expected that he would provide background support for student activists, but once again he was propelled into a more active role by events that made Tougaloo the unofficial capital of the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
Jackson Woolworth's sit-in In 1963, King played a part in an act of civil disobedience that gave the movement some of its most iconic images. On May 28, he and a small group of Tougaloo students and faculty drove to downtown Jackson, joining multiracial demonstrators attempting to dine at a whites-only lunch counter in the Woolworth's store near the Governor's mansion. As one of several demonstrations planned with guidance from Medgar Evers of the NAACP, the sit-in was a small-scale challenge to the Jim Crow custom of denying black Americans their most basic rights.
King had been assigned the role of "spotter," so he could avoid arrest and provide regular, live telephone reports to John Salter and Evers, who were monitoring the action from the Jackson NAACP office. Wearing his ministerial clerical collar (often called a bullet-proof vest by members of SNCC), King stood behind three black students, Anne Moody, Pearlena Lewis, and Memphis Norman, who had volunteered to sit at the lunch counter.
News of the sit-in spread quickly, and soon a large crowd of whites descended on the store. The mob crowded the aisles near the counter, screaming obscenities, dumping condiments on the students, and even punching and kicking demonstrators. As the confrontation escalated, King phoned Evers to report what was happening at the counter.
The police gathered outside the building made no attempt to curb the violence. The only people taken into custody were several whites picketing outside (including King's wife Jeanette, arrested for blocking the sidewalk). At one point, King went outside to confront Police Captain John Lee Ray and plead for the police to protect the demonstrators. Ray refused, claiming that the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling prevented officers of the law from interfering unless a store manager requested help. King rushed back into the store to ask management to intervene, but was unable to find anyone who would admit to being in charge. He then phoned Tougaloo College's president, Dr. A. D. Beittel, who in turn asked national church leaders to help bring Woolworth's corporate executives into the conversation. The situation was not defused until three hours later, when local management finally closed the store on orders from the national headquarters in New York City.
A few weeks later—and just six days after the assassination of Medgar Evers in Jackson— King and John Salter were injured in a suspicious car crash—victims of what official police records called a traffic accident. The crash shattered King's jaw, causing disfiguring facial damage that would require numerous surgeries over the next 12 years.