Lincoln×Jr.

Two men who changed America recall the first time money sat in their pockets—and what they chose to do with it.

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legend · A

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865

Starts with a joke. Ends you.

corpus22.7k pages · letters, debates, speeches

Vera speaking

Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL OF ——: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., on On the first time they had real money and what they did with it.

legend · B

Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968

Every sentence arrives on time

corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters

full transcript

Vera
Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL OF ——: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., on On the first time they had real money and what they did with it.
Abraham Lincoln
Well, Reverend King, I never had much money early on, but I remember the first real wages I earned—flatboating down to New Orleans when I was nineteen. Fellow named Gentry paid me eight dollars a month, which seemed a fortune. I'd split rails for thirty-one cents a day before that, so you can imagine my arithmetic.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Eight dollars a month. Mr. Lincoln, I appreciate you beginning with the specific figure, because money has a way of becoming abstract when we forget what it actually meant to those who had none. My first real income came from Ebenezer Baptist in Montgomery, nineteen fifty-four. Dexter Avenue paid me four thousand two hundred dollars annually, which was more than my father made when he started at Ebenezer in Atlanta.
Abraham Lincoln
Four thousand! You were a rich man by my standards. But tell me—what did you do with it? Did you squirrel it away, or did it burn a hole in your pocket the way it does with young men?
Martin Luther King Jr.
I bought books, Mr. Lincoln. Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, the theologians I'd been borrowing from libraries. I wanted my own copies, marked with my own hand. And Coretta—my wife—she needed a proper winter coat. We'd been students too long to pretend we didn't notice the cold.
Abraham Lincoln
Books! I spent mine on books too, though not right away. First I gave most of it to my father. The law was that a boy's wages belonged to his father until he came of age, and though I was nineteen and full-grown, I honored that obligation. But I kept a little back, and I bought a copy of the Revised Statutes of Indiana. Dry as week-old bread, but it had the law in it, and I read it cover to cover.
Martin Luther King Jr.
You gave your wages to your father even when you didn't have to? That's the part that interests me, Mr. Lincoln. Because there's a choice in that moment—the moment when you have something of your own for the first time. You can hoard it, or you can remember who brought you to that moment.
Abraham Lincoln
Well, my father and I didn't always see eye to eye. He thought education was a waste, and I thought ignorance was a sin. But he'd fed me, after a fashion, and kept a roof over me. I figured I owed him that much. Though I'll confess, Reverend, when I finally turned twenty-one and my wages became my own, I didn't give him another cent.
Martin Luther King Jr.
There's honesty. I think we sanctify our elders sometimes when we should simply respect them. My father, Martin Luther King Senior, was a strong man, a proud man. But when I had money, I began to see that I could chart a course he hadn't imagined. Not in rebellion, but in expansion.
Abraham Lincoln
That's well put. When I got that eight dollars a month, I saw that a man could earn his way by something other than the ax and the plow. I saw the river, the big boats, the commerce of the world. I saw that there were other ways to be useful.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet, Mr. Lincoln, you didn't stay on the river. You could have. Boatmen made decent money, didn't they? But you came back to the dirt roads of Illinois. Why?
Abraham Lincoln
Because I saw New Orleans, and I saw the slave market there. I saw human beings chained and prodded like cattle. I was young and I didn't have words for what I felt, but I knew it was wrong. I knew I couldn't spend my life on a river that carried that cargo. So I came home and studied law, because law seemed like the way to fight wrongs without using your fists.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The law as an instrument of liberation. I believe that too, though I came to see its limits. But tell me, when you earned your first money as a lawyer, was that different? Did it feel like clean money, earned by the mind rather than the back?
Abraham Lincoln
My first case paid me a few dollars, and yes, it felt different. It felt like I'd earned it by helping someone, by standing between a man and an injustice. But I'll tell you, Reverend, the money from flatboating felt honest too. It was the cargo I couldn't abide, not the work itself. A man ought to be able to earn his bread by his sweat without being ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Amen to that. And yet so many were denied even that dignity. When I stood with the sanitation workers in Memphis, just before I died, they were asking for nothing more than what you said—honest pay for honest work. They carried signs that said, 'I Am a Man.' Because even that had to be declared.
Abraham Lincoln
I saw those photographs, or I imagine I have in whatever way we see things now. Those signs would've made sense to me. In my day, we said a man had a right to eat the bread he earned by the sweat of his own face. Same principle. Different century.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Same struggle. You know, Mr. Lincoln, when I had that first real paycheck from Dexter Avenue, I felt something I hadn't expected. I felt responsibility. Not just to Coretta, or to my future children, but to the people who would sit in those pews. They were paying me to lead them, and many of them had less than I did.
Abraham Lincoln
I know that feeling. When I started my practice in Springfield, my clients were poor farmers, storekeepers, people in debt. They paid me what they could, sometimes in goods instead of cash. I once got paid in a barrel of vinegar. But they trusted me with their troubles, and that's a weight you carry.
Martin Luther King Jr.
A barrel of vinegar! Well, that's one way to preserve a man's faith in the law. But you're right, it is a weight. I think that's what money reveals about us—not whether we have it, but what we do when we first hold it. Do we clutch it, or do we let it move through us toward some purpose?
Abraham Lincoln
I clutched some of it, I'll admit. I was careful, some said tight-fisted. But I'd been poor, Reverend, and poor leaves a mark. You don't forget what it's like to wonder if there'll be enough. So yes, I saved. But I also gave, when the cause was right. I paid for my stepmother's care. I helped young men who wanted schooling.
Martin Luther King Jr.
You're describing stewardship, Mr. Lincoln. That's the word we used in the church. Not ownership, but stewardship. The resources pass through our hands, and we're accountable for what we do with them. I tried to live that way, though I'll confess I liked a good suit and a decent car.
Abraham Lincoln
Nothing wrong with a good suit! I was known for looking shabby, but that was more from distraction than principle. Mary, my wife, she made sure I looked presentable when it mattered. She understood that appearance carries meaning, especially for a man trying to lead.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Coretta understood that too. We were young, idealistic, but we weren't naive. We knew that the movement needed leaders who looked like they could lead, who spoke with authority. That required resources. But here's the tension, Mr. Lincoln—how do you live with enough dignity to be heard without living so comfortably that you forget the people you serve?
Abraham Lincoln
That's the razor's edge, isn't it? I wrestled with that in the White House. The mansion, the servants, the state dinners—all while boys were dying in the field. I never felt easy with the luxury, but I understood it was part of the office. The presidency required a certain presentation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet you never forgot where you came from. I read that you'd walk the halls at night, unable to sleep, thinking of the casualties. That's not a man drunk on power or comfort. That's a man carrying the weight.
Abraham Lincoln
I carried it poorly some nights. But back to your question about that first money—I think what it taught me was that earning is easier than spending wisely. Any fool can make a dollar if he's willing to work. But spending it in a way that honors the work, that serves some purpose beyond yourself—that takes thought.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the testimony I'd give too. When I won the Nobel Prize in nineteen sixty-four, the prize was fifty-four thousand dollars. I didn't keep a cent. I gave it to the movement, to SCLC, to the organizations doing the work. Because that money wasn't earned by me alone—it was earned by every person who marched, who sat in, who risked their lives.
Abraham Lincoln
Fifty-four thousand dollars, and you gave it all away? Reverend, you're either a saint or a fool, and I suspect you're too smart to be a fool. That's remarkable. I don't know if I could've done that.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't know if it was wisdom or just clarity about what mattered. I knew I didn't need it. I had my salary, I had enough. And I knew there were people being beaten in Selma who needed bail money, needed resources to keep going. How could I keep it?
Abraham Lincoln
How indeed. I think we're describing the same principle from different angles. You give because the cause demands it. I saved because poverty terrified me, but I also gave when the cause demanded it. Different temperaments, same North Star.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The North Star. That's your metaphor, Mr. Lincoln, and it's a good one. Because money is just a tool for navigation. It can point you toward what you value, or it can lead you into a wilderness. That first real money we earned—it revealed our direction.
Abraham Lincoln
I like that. It revealed our direction. When I bought that book of Indiana statutes with my flatboat money, I was declaring something without knowing it. I was saying, 'I want to understand the rules that govern us. I want to have a say in how things are run.'
Martin Luther King Jr.
And when I bought those theology books, I was saying, 'I want to understand the God who calls us to justice. I want to have the words to proclaim that call.' We were both preparing for battles we couldn't yet see.
Abraham Lincoln
We were. And here we are, still talking about it. I don't know what that means, but it seems important that we remember these things. That we remember what it felt like to be young and poor and holding a few dollars that felt like a fortune.
Martin Luther King Jr.
It keeps us honest, Mr. Lincoln. It reminds us why we did what we did. Not for the money—neither of us ended up rich, and we both ended up dead before our time. But for what the work meant. For the people who needed someone to stand up.
Abraham Lincoln
Well said. Though I'll point out that you're considerably more eloquent than I am. I just told stories and hoped people saw the point. You preached.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And you governed, Mr. Lincoln. You held a nation together when it was tearing itself apart. Don't diminish that with modesty. We both used what we had—our words, our will, our witness. And yes, the little bit of money we earned along the way.
Abraham Lincoln
Then let's end here. Two men who had their first dollars and used them to buy books. That seems about right. Knowledge as the first purchase, justice as the long investment.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Amen, Mr. Lincoln. That's the testimony. That's the record.