According to Heeding the Call when a shoe salesman once asked M.L. and his father to go to the “colored” section of the store Martin’s father replied “We’ll either buy shoes sitting here or we won’t buy shoes at all.” Then he took M.L.’s hand and walked out.
When Martin was older and now in high school he won first prize in a speech contest and as stated in Heeding the Call traveled to represent his school; in a statewide competition on the theme “The Negro and the Constitution.” During that speech M.L. spoke about how “the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments from writing on the printed page to actuality.” On M.L.’s bus ride back to Atlanta, he noticed that need firsthand when both his teacher and him were forced to give up their seat to white people. They both had to stand in the aisle for the entire ride. And later M.L. said according to Heeding the Call “I don’t think I have ever been so deeply angered in my life.” At first Martin wanted to go to Atlanta’s Morehouse College in 1944 to become a doctor then he realized that he could help people more as a lawyer. He also majored in sociology which had a lot of courses on racial problems. As stated in Heeding the Call he joined the National Association