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L: Quite, no question about it. An excellent speaker, even prior to becoming a
 minister. He had no intention, as many of us, of becoming a preacher. That was
 something that came a little bit later.

P: Any other students who, perhaps not as big as Martin Luther King, but to give
 other prominent students?

L: Larone Bennett, the black historian. He has written any number of outstanding
 books and when you got back to the library, just check that name and you will
 discover that he is quite an outstanding black historian.

P: He was one of your students as well?

L: Yes. There were some others whose names escape me. I have to go back and
 look at the book and see.

P: You still have those old records?

L: Some of them, but in moving about, sometimes you lose things.

P: I just turned that tape recorder back on. Now, before you came to Tampa, you
 left Atlanta and you pastored a church.

L: In Augusta, Georgia, one of the old historic cities of Georgia that played a
 prominent role during the days of the civil war. I became minister of a historic
 church, with the outstanding black pulpiteer of the last century, Dr. C.T.
 Walker, whose life story reads like a fairy tale. He pastored a number of years in
 Augusta. At the same time, he pastored the Oligard Baptist Church in New
 York, sort of dual-pastor. Which is something that today a __ man in a small,
 rural area is not heard of. Usually you have one church, a station church, to
 which you give service every Sunday and you are there weekly, other then going
 on speaking engagements.

P: What year did you take this church over in Augusta, Georgia?

L: In 1946, as I recall, and then until 1955.

P: Then in 1955, you came here to Tampa?

L: I came to Tampa. I arrived on December 30th, 1955.

P: To pastor?


L: Yes, and my first day in the pulpit was January 1, 1956.