In April of 1968, the Rev. Julius Caesar Herrin sat at a table in the home of Martin Luther King, Jr., opening sympathy letters to Coretta. A white minister working behind the scenes in the Civil Rights Movement, Herrin assisted Historically Black Colleges and Universities seeking to strengthen weak finances and supported students working to dismantle segregation. With grant funding, Herrin awarded scholarships to activists, including John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, Diane Nash, Bernice Johnson, and Stokely Carmichael. To do so, Herrin collaborated with leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Council of Churches, the Southern Project of the National Student Association, and the Southern Conference Education Fund. This biography traces Herrin's life from a mill town in North Carolina to the national scene. His life is a microcosm of struggles within the American church to create the Beloved Community. Herrin's work was possible because his liberal theology and support for interracial meetings resulted in his firing in 1954 by North Carolina Baptists, for whom he worked with the Baptist Student Union at UNC Chapel Hill. That firing forced him to move north, where he ministered in an American Baptist church. The Field Foundation, the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, and other American Baptist organizations in 1958 provided funds for Herrin's return south and his entry into the Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, Herrin's cultivation of congregations supporting civil rights resulted in the 1970 formation of the American Baptist Churches of the South.