Willie Pearl Mackey King is a retired federal employee. From 1962 to 1966, she served on the executive staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She is a long-time member of Montgomery Hills Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland.
By Emmitt Drumgoole
Willie Pearl Mackey King’s life is the message.
If Marshall McLuhan was right — that the medium is as important as the message — then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is all the more prophetic because of how it reached the world. Willie Pearl Mackey King (no relation to Dr. King) typed those generation-shifting words from King’s used napkins and greasy brown paper bags, all under the threat that she, too, could be jailed. Night after night, she pieced together fragments of that letter — scraps of paper that carried the weight of a nation’s conscience — until the full message could rise and speak.
“I’m no King,” I once confessed to Willie during a Wednesday conversation in early 2025, when tensions were high and the country felt frayed. She looked at me, calm but firm. “There are times to be silent,” she said. “And then there are times when you cannot hold your tongue.”
I have stood many times in the courage of Willie Pearl Mackey King, whose compassionate eyes and well-worn hands carry a fire that calls the Church to rise. Her life reminds me that the Church’s role is to be a prophetic voice and a beacon of action in the pursuit of justice. It is the Gospel’s call to amplify the voices of the discarded and undervalued.
Willie Pearl Mackey King’s life and work embody that call. Her legacy continues to inspire the sacred responsibility that belongs to each of us today.
—Emmitt Drumgoole is Willie King’s pastor at Montgomery Hills Baptist Church.
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