Q: What did Martin Luther King, Jr. insist Billy Graham call him?
A: Mike.
The two leaders first met at a 1957 Crusade meeting in New York City.
“One night, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom I was pleased to count a friend, gave an eloquent opening prayer at the service; he also came at my invitation to one of our Team retreats during the Crusade to help us understand the racial situation in America more fully,” Billy Graham wrote in his autobiography.
As they worked together more and their friendship grew, King asked Mr. Graham to call him by his nickname.
“His father … who was called Big Mike, called him Little Mike. He asked me to call him just plain Mike.”
Mr. Graham was in Australia at the time of King’s death.
“I was almost in a state of shock,” he told a journalist shortly after receiving the news. “Not only was I losing a friend through a vicious and senseless killing, but America was losing a social leader and a prophet, and I felt his death would be one of the greatest tragedies in our history.”
