--- title: National Prayer Breakfast History: How It Got Its Start description: Eisenhower attended the first one in 1953 canonical: https://time.com/4202899/national-prayer-breakfast-history/ author: Merrill Fabry article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-02-04T12:45:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:23.069Z article:section: History og:title: National Prayer Breakfast History: How It Got Its Start og:description: Eisenhower attended the first one in 1953 og:url: https://time.com/4202899/national-prayer-breakfast-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab8cea1fd7b7e7a3/69887c080b72e3427f6e7f74/breakfast.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Billy Graham & JFK og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: National Prayer Breakfast History: How It Got Its Start twitter:description: Eisenhower attended the first one in 1953 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab8cea1fd7b7e7a3/69887c080b72e3427f6e7f74/breakfast.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is How the National Prayer Breakfast Got Its Start > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The March on Washington: The Movement Begins [Watch (HLS stream): The March on Washington: The Movement Begins](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eYWENlb4.m3u8) (6:26)  _Published 2014-04-07. The March on Washington was a peaceful demonstration for racial equality. But it would not have happened without the beatings, arrests and violent struggle for civil rights that had already engulfed the Deep South._  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Feb 4, 2016 12:45 PM UTC  Rev. Billy Graham and President John F. Kennedy at a National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 9, 1961. Rev. Billy Graham and President John F. Kennedy at a National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 9, 1961. PhotoQuest / Getty Images  by [Merrill Fabry](https://time.com/author/merrill-fabry/)  ## Merrill Fabry Feb 4, 2016 12:45 PM UTC Thousands of people will attend the [64th](http://www.c-span.org/video/?404114-1/2016-national-prayer-breakfast) annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, an annual event attended by every President of the United States for decades. But how did the breakfast become a presidential institution all those years ago? The first president to attend the prayer breakfast was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, but credit for the idea goes back to Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and Methodist minister who lived in Seattle. In the mid-1930s, Vereide organized local groups of politicians and businessmen to talk and pray together before work, a time which wouldn’t [interfere](http://www.slate.com/articles/news%5Fand%5Fpolitics/explainer/2009/06/whats%5Fwith%5Fall%5Fthe%5Fprayer%5Fbreakfasts.html) with professional or family obligations. Seeking to motivate invitees to address the problem of poverty, he relied on the personal connections forged at the meetings and the personal evangelism of the attendees to spread his ideas. His initiative grew, expanding to other major cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In 1942 Vereide moved to Washington D.C., where he started breakfast prayer groups for members of the House and the Senate. Republican Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas, a close friend and adviser to Eisenhower, attended one of these prayer groups. It was through him that the 1953 breakfast connected the House, Senate and President. As President Reagan [explained](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=36746&st=&st1=) during his own speech at the 1986 National Prayer Breakfast, Eisenhower had told Carlson that the White House was “the loneliest house I’ve ever been in” so Carlson suggested Eisenhower meet with his prayer group. That meeting turned out to be the first joint prayer breakfast. On Feb. 5, 1953, just over two weeks after he was inaugurated, Eisenhower attended the dedicatory prayer breakfast of the International Christian Leadership, the name Vereide gave to his movement (it continues to exist today, now known as [the Family](http://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Family-international-religious-movement) or [the Fellowship](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/13/frat-house-for-jesus)). Attended by some 500 people, the breakfast was held at Conrad Hilton’s Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. The AP described it as “a special invitation prayer breakfast for Senate and House members who have been meeting weekly at the Capitol to ask divine guidance.” Eisenhower [called](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9851) it a “wholly enjoyable occasion” and was surprised at the size of the gathering, “Until I started over I had the picture, which Frank Carlson gave me last summer, of a small Congressional group of Congressmen and Senators who met on a morning each week. I had an idea of coming over to see 20 or 25 or maybe 50 people. I had no idea that our host has such a party as this. I do hope I may speak for all of you in thanking him for such a breakfast, the like of which I have not had in 10 years. As long as you feed me grits and sausage, everything will be alright.” In his[ speech](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9851) at that first Prayer Breakfast—which was known as the Presidential Prayer Breakfast until 1970—Eisenhower focused on the role of religion in the founding of the U.S. and the continued importance of “deeply felt religious belief.” He said, “Today I think that prayer is just simply necessity, because by prayer I believe we mean an effort to get in touch with the Infinite.” [TIME](http://time.com/vault/issue/1954-02-15/page/51/) covered the event the following year, in 1954, when 600 people gathered at the same hotel, and Eisenhower was joined by “the Vice President, the Chief Justice of the United States, Cabinet members, Congressmen, diplomats, businessmen” to, as Carlson put it, “to renew our faith and our commitment to God.” And, by Eisenhower’s standards and for every president who followed, it proved worth the repeat visit: the “sturdy” breakfast menu included, among other treats, grits and sausage. **_Read More about the National Prayer Breakfast Here in the TIME Vault:_** [Breakfast in Washington](http://time.com/vault/issue/1954-02-15/page/51/) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, there's not anything more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people. We shall not be moved. As a kid, there was not much I could aspire to. We were diminished in the way we thought we could access power. And be part of the American fabric. [ NOISE ] And so, this gigantic march. We were saying to the world, this Land of great opportunity. This land of liberty, has an asterisk beside it. It is a land of freedom for everybody else, except black people. [ CROSSTALK ] Do you want to be free? Yes! Do you want to be free? Yes! Do you want to be free? Yes! [ CROSSTALK ] [ MUSIC ] Prior to Martin Luther King, Jr ., the United States was like a dysfunctional drug addict or alcoholic. You become addicted to racial segregation. [ MUSIC ] The end of the second World War, you were under the belief, if we were triumphant over Fascism, that the men and women returned from that conflict. Would be celebrated and honored When I was growing up in rural Alabama and would see those signs that was there. White waiting, colored waiting. White men, colored men. I would ask my mother, my father, my grandparents why they would say, that's the way it is, don't get in the way. I first knew of Dr. King the way everybody knew of Dr. King. All of a sudden one day in the midst of this turmoil in some far away place called Montgomery. Dr. King was pressed into service and took over the leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott, and we heard that almost immediately because not only did he, accept the leadership. But he pressed this idea that we should do it nonviolently. I was deeply inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Junior to find a way to get in the way. So, I used non violence by sitting on a lunch counter stool, by going on the freedom ride. To get in the way. The Freedom Ride was an attempt to break the segregation laws on interstate transportation on buses and on trains. There were six whites on the Freedom Ride and seven blacks we would sit together the black and white and Rock Hill South Carolina is where we encountered the first violence with John Lewis being. Pretty well beaten up. Federal government finally intervened and these early victories only encouraged us that we could do other things. They were very smart, media wise, because they dressed up. They put the ties on, they put jackets on. They were looking good. And they are going up against the authority. They're going against the man That was tremendously exciting to us as young, white southerners. As the non- violent uh, concept grew, parallel to that was also the growth of, eye for an eye violence. And there were many who, were quite bright, and quite gifted and honorable men and women. We saw violence as an answer. That just did not quite sit comfortably with the code that others of us had. Saying that although racism was a cruel experience, we could not fight it by becoming racists. [ NOISE ] In Birmingham, Alabama, the nation was cheated with television images. Of black and white boys and girls having high pressure fire hoses , slam them up against the walls as they were peacefully demonstrating to end segregation. Police dogs biting them. These pictures were circulated all around the world. [ NOISE ] But those demonstrations were like a. Spark that ignited a prairie fire of black protests across the country. And Kennedy, on the one hand he's trying to win Africans and people and say, we're a better system than Communism, and at the same time there was this harsh treatment of black people that just didn't square in the final equation. And the more we were fiesty in our demands of government, the more it revealed the weaknesses in our construct. What started out, as the Black Negro protest, had developed into a Negro revolution. There was a feeling that we would not be able to break the deep south. So, that march on Washington was to be the culmination of all of this intense organizing. It really has to be a moral crusade for the country. The struggle for freedom in the United States had to move to the center of power. To where the predsident and the congress were that no matter how many demonstrations took place In Montgomery and in Birmingham, and in places all around the South. That until you could change the central government, significant things wouldn't happen. The march on Washington was an accumulation of all this cuz here would have been the biggest display of America in its most democratic moment. Making a choice, and it was something that was emerging as, a great demonstration as to the will of the people. [ MUSIC ] [ UNKNOWN ] That that day, erupted, into violence. Then our cause would be seriously. [ UNKNOWN ] reversed. And hard to come by again. 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