ABSTRACT
This exploration of the psycho historical analysis of the autobiographical text authored by Benjamin Elijah, Born to Rebel, stems from a mysterious Fed-Ex package that appeared in my office one day in 2000 when I was chair of the Department of Sociology and Avalon Professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a contract application from the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Park Service for a consultant to assist the Park Service historian in updating park exhibits about Dr. King as a child and adolescent and when he returned to Atlanta in 1960. This updating would require interviewing persons who knew Dr. King during those periods of his life. I applied and was awarded the contract. This resulted in me finding and interviewing twenty-four persons. I also consulted archival and secondary sources and had the good fortune of seeking and receiving advice from old time Atlantans, especially t hose familiar with Morehouse and with the Auburn Avenue community where Dr. King grew up. The more I dug, the more I became intrigued by the value of psychohistory theory and methodology in writing a chapter such as this on Dr. King and those who influenced his development before he was twenty-five years old. This was especially interesting to me given my long time interest in developing and testing sociological theories of the community contextual development of intellectually gifted Blacks, especially black males.
