1

“The Stirring of the Water”

I think the Negroes are stirring and they won’t be held down much longer.

—Virginia Durr, 1951

Racially integrated events rarely occurred in Montgomery, but for several years both whites and blacks gathered together at the city’s spacious Cramton Bowl for an Easter sunrise celebration. Segregated seating applied at the municipal arena, but the all-white planning committee worked to include African American preachers in the program as they developed the service. Typically a black minister delivered a prayer and an African American choral group from a local school led the audience in a few traditional spirituals while whites presented the balance of the program, including the sermon. The 1952 gathering proved to be the last, however. Despite steady rainfall, city bus drivers found it more convenient to drop off their black passengers several blocks from the entrance to the event. Even if the weather had not dampened spirits, the discourteous treatment they experienced at the hands of the bus drivers certainly did. Some did not stay for the service, and many more lobbied their ministers to put together all-black sunrise services in the future. Portia Trenholm, the wife of the president of Alabama State College, claimed this was “the very first spontaneous protest as a result of discourteous treatment on the buses.” The following year the black clergy bowed out of the planning process, and African Americans attended a separate sunrise service on the Alabama State College campus.¹

This act of protest on the part of the black citizenry of Montgomery reveals their willingness to act collectively to resist mistreatment at the hands of white bus drivers. While this action may have seemed inconsequential at the time, it demonstrates a discernible spirit of resistance among African Americans in the city by the middle of the twentieth century. Years before Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Montgomery, a handful of whites and many blacks shared a growing dissatisfaction with the racial status quo. Several were already hard at work testing strategies of resistance to segregation.

The ranks of those questioning and even challenging Montgomery’s racial mores near the middle of the twentieth century were diverse. While demeaning experiences due to segregation concerned the entire African American community, leaders broadened their civil rights agenda to include broader economic concerns. Specifically, Dexter Avenue pastor Vernon Johns, Pullman porter E. D. Nixon, and seamstress Rosa Parks not only challenged the physical markers of white supremacy evidenced by segregation, but also questioned the more insidious and diffuse economic oppression that gravely influenced the lives of poor and working-class African Americans. While their agendas were not uniform, several men and women had already decided their days of quiet submission under segregation were over years before King ever set foot in the city. Though their methods and philosophies differed, several were actively stirring the waters in Montgomery.²

Montgomery sits on the Alabama River in the heart of the Black Belt, a land with rich soil, a heritage of bountiful cotton crops, and a legacy of slavery. In addition to its role as a major marketplace for the sale and distribution of cotton, the city also serves as the state capital. The community’s investment in the institution of slavery made it a hotbed of southern political maneuvering following the election of Abraham Lincoln. When southern voices arguing for secession from the United States prevailed, Montgomery was chosen to host a convention of slave states. Following the Civil War, the city continued to depend upon cotton from hinterland plantations to fuel the economy. Many former slaves transitioned to either tenant farming or sharecropping, and as a result cotton production remained the economic bellwether for the region. Thanks to a combination of state government jobs and the region’s rich agricultural land, Montgomery did not aggressively pursue industrialization. The city’s economy during the twentieth century was shaped more by advances in aviation than in industrialization.³

A few years after their first flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright searched for a place to train prospective pilots during the colder winter months. They selected a site on the outskirts of Montgomery, which became known as Maxwell Field. While the training school was relatively shortlived, aviation remained a permanent feature of the city’s economy. Over the coming decades, Montgomery became home to two air force bases, introducing a reliance on the federal government into the local economy.⁴

The increase in military personnel reshaped the city’s job market and demographics. Following the Civil War, African Americans outnumbered whites until around 1910, by which time whites had pulled even with blacks. The white population continued to grow more rapidly over the next forty years, resulting in a 1950 population of more than 110,000, with roughly 60 percent white. This increase can be attributed to an influx of working-class whites who greatly reshaped municipal politics as the old political machine slowly lost control of the city. The military employed hundreds of Montgomery’s new residents, who had no ties to historically elite families that had monopolized local political power. The city leaders’ failure to attract and develop major manufacturing further weakened their hold. The populist Dave Birmingham capitalized on this growing distrust of political leaders in his 1953 campaign for a seat on the city commission. He went so far as to accuse politicians and city fathers of poisoning the city water supply, a claim that resonated with the suspicions of some of the town’s newer residents. With the support of an effective alliance of a few registered African Americans and the white working class, Birmingham shocked the establishment with his election to the city commission. New political realities were but one indication that the city was undergoing significant social change.⁵

The economy and social structure of Montgomery depended upon the affordable service labor of the region’s African American men and women. In the late 1950s, Baptist minister Ralph Abernathy estimated that service-oriented occupations accounted for 75–80 percent of the African American workforce. Approximately two-thirds of the black women in the area found employment as domestic workers. The lack of alternative industrial jobs significantly limited their earning potential. According to the 1950 U.S. Census, the median family income for African Americans in Montgomery in 1949 was $908, while in Birmingham, where the availability of industrial jobs bolstered the earning power of black residents, the median income was $1,609. While a small percentage of the city’s black population held professional jobs, primarily in the education field or the military, the lack of industrial jobs made the gap between the classes in Montgomery’s African American community particularly acute. The limited economy contributed to the stifling experience of life under white control for many of the city’s African Americans.⁶

Kathy Dunn Jackson, who grew up in Montgomery during the 1940s and 1950s, still remembers the dehumanizing treatment she received when she had to have her tonsils and adenoids removed as a young child. Since there were no African American ear, nose, and throat doctors in the city, she had to have her surgery at St. Margaret’s Hospital, which did not allow blacks to have a room in the main building following their surgery. Instead, hospital orderlies moved Jackson to a room shared with all the hospital’s black patients in a small house behind the hospital. In follow-up visits with her doctor, she had to wait in a “colored” waiting room that doubled as a janitorial closet. Jackson’s memories are indicative of the dehumanizing events that were all too common in Montgomery during the decade following World War II.⁷

Given the insidious nature of Montgomery’s racism and segregation, it appeared that white supremacy was firmly in place. Further examination, however, reveals the presence of subtle changes in racial mores. A front-page article in the Alabama Tribuneindicated “race plates” (a practice whereby a letter C was placed next to names of African Americans) would be dropped from the Montgomery phone directory. The rationale for the change, according to a company representative, was “to avoid discrimination against Negro people.” He indicated that all married women, regardless of race, would be given the title “MRS.” before their names. In addition to this symbolic change, significant services for African Americans also expanded. Montgomery established two black high schools: Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver High. St. Jude’s Hospital opened, marking the first hospital for blacks in the city. Local white leaders provided these expanding services for African Americans within the framework of white supremacy and segregation. While easier access to quality medical care and education directly enhanced the daily lives of Montgomery’s African American citizens, these services did not ameliorate the dehumanizing pall of segregation and economic marginalization they continued to face. Even though President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 Executive Order integrating the armed forces provided an oasis of growing inclusion at Maxwell Air Force Base, African Americans who worked there returned each evening to a segregated southern city.⁸

As Montgomery’s African Americans gained access to additional community services and institutions, their challenges to overt racism expanded. Protests following incidents of police brutality even led a few whites to question unwarranted violence by police against African Americans. When Montgomery police mercilessly beat an African American, Robert Felder, so severely that he was hospitalized for several weeks, his white employer took the unusual step of reporting the incident to the press. Police chief Ralph B. King dismissed the officers involved, but he paid a price for his diligence. Bowing to public pressure, the city commissioners forced Chief King to retire. A few years later, the police arrested Gertrude Perkins on a charge of public drunkenness. Rather than transporting her to the police station, the arresting officers took her to a remote location where they raped her. When the incident came to light, police chief Carlisle E. Johnstone vigorously pursued harsh reprimands and even the prosecution of the officers involved. Once again, the city commission did not back their police chief. The mayor accused the NAACP of fabricating the whole story, and police records were altered to protect the identities of the accused rapists. When city authorities ignored his recommendations, Chief Johnstone began searching for a job in another community and soon left the city.⁹

Police brutality against African Americans went even further one hot August afternoon, when an intoxicated World War II veteran named Hilliard Brooks attempted to ride a Montgomery bus. Driver C. L. Hood would not allow him to board, but Brooks refused to back down and unleashed a string of obscenities. When the police officer M. E. Mills arrived on the scene, he pushed Brooks to the ground and fired a fatal shot when Brooks scrambled to get back up. Alabama State professor Jo Ann Robinson recalled that Brooks simply got “out of place” with the bus driver and paid the ultimate price. Following a protest by friends of Brooks, a police review board found the officer’s actions justified, an assessment endorsed by the mayor. While a few whites and many African Americans questioned the violence and abuse visited upon African Americans, city officials continued to sanction excessive force by police officers. Those rare local white leaders willing to voice concerns and challenge the racial status quo did not last long in Montgomery. African American acts of resistance seemed to be making little headway. Still, the challenges themselves demonstrate the willingness of some to take risks to challenge white supremacy.¹⁰

Despite the persistence of racial repression, black institutions of higher learning remained a vibrant force in the region. Tuskegee Institute, a black normal school just thirty miles east of Montgomery, was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881. Under his leadership, the school focused on industrial education while attempting to accommodate the wishes of southern white authorities to maintain a segregated society. The faculty of the school became part of a small but growing black middle class in the region. By the 1930s, the advent of the automobile had dramatically reduced the travel time between Tuskegee and the state capital, allowing the school’s faculty to become regular visitors to Montgomery for shopping and cultural events.¹¹

Alabama State College (ASC), which sat right in the heart of Montgomery, had an even greater influence on the city. Originally a normal school located in Marian, Alabama, the institution moved to Montgomery in 1886. By the middle of the twentieth century, the college had nearly two thousand students and employed two hundred faculty and staff members. ASC’s president was H. Councill Trenholm, who at the age of twenty-five succeeded his father in 1925. Under his leadership through 1961, the school grew from a junior college to a four-year institution, and began to bestow graduate degrees in 1940. Trenholm worked to carefully balance fidelity to the concerns of African Americans with the expectations of the white government officials who helped fund the school. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of his presidency, Professor Jo Ann Robinson penned a letter of congratulations to Trenholm: “It is my belief that true greatness can be measured only in terms of services one renders to humanity. If this is any criterion, you are one of the few truly great and I respect and admire you for it.”¹²

Careful to avoid controversy, Trenholm earned the admiration of blacks and whites. His stewardship of ASC provided a haven for educated African American leaders in Montgomery. Many of the employees at ASC knew their jobs were tied to state government subsidies of their school. Most followed Trenholm’s lead in cautiously interacting with white leaders, as they sought to better their lives and social standing through compromise. ASC employees and graduates helped provide Montgomery with a growing black middle-class community.

In addition to black colleges, the NAACP had been active since the institution of a local chapter in 1918. The following year, the state chapter met in the basement of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in an effort to get state authorities to take a strong stand against lynching and to improve educational opportunities for blacks. The NAACP was also active in voter registration efforts, and the organization served to bring together many seeking racial justice in the Montgomery area, including a Pullman porter named E. D. Nixon. As a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph, Nixon earned a reputation as a tireless fighter for justice and social change. He also became the person to whom working-class blacks went when they had significant issues with the courts or local government officials. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, however, was more often than not dominated by moderate professional blacks who preferred a cautious approach to racial advancement. As one local resident noted, the organization was actively involved in the community, “but not very much really to get down to the masses of the people—just the top layer of the Negroes.” Many ASC faculty and a few local clergy participated in the local chapter, resulting in an organization that relied on a deliberate legal strategy that was largely nonconfrontational.¹³

During the mid 1940s, the local NAACP elections proved to be a battlefield as segments of the African American community competed with one another for control of this significant civil rights organization. In December 1944, Nixon decided to run for president of the local chapter, facing Robert Matthews, who worked for Pilgrim Insurance Company. Matthews won the election by just a few votes, prompting Nixon to compose a letter of protest to Walter White in the NAACP national office. According to Nixon, Matthews triumphed through illegal means, stuffing the ballot box with the ballots of fellow employees of Pilgrim Insurance who only showed up once a year for the election. Although indignant over how the election was conducted, Nixon claimed his true concern was for the people of Montgomery, as Matthews was not “qualified for the office” and “is afraid to oppose white people when he knows that they are wrong.” Unlike Matthews, others in the city were laboring to bring change and reform: “all the work that has been done in Montgomery for the pass [sic] year was done by Mr. W. G. Porter [NAACP vice president], Mrs. Rosa L. Parks, and myself.” In a handwritten postscript to the typed letter, Nixon shared what his platform would have included had he been elected, emphasizing that under his leadership the NAACP would be “a branch for the people.”¹⁴

Apparently many of Nixon’s concerns regarding Mr. Matthews’s leadership had merit. Donald Jones, a NAACP national representative, visited the city in May 1945. Following his visit, Jones composed a letter to Ella Baker, who was serving as the director of branches for the NAACP. Jones concluded that “the Branch is in a bad way due to a lack of competent leadership not only in the Branch, but apparently in the community as a whole. Usually in a Branch there is at least one individual who stands out, sometimes in the Branch setup and sometimes in opposition; but in Montgomery I found nobody who seemed to have the capacity to do a job.” Jones called Matthews “hopeless” and observed that “besides being incompetent he’s disinterested. The main reason for his being president, it seems, is because he works for the Pilgrim Insurance Company there which has had one of its personal [sic] always as president for the last several terms, obviously for prestige purposes.” The leadership of the NAACP in Montgomery had been reduced to part of a patronage system controlled by a particularly powerful African American–owned business. Nixon’s concerns about the effectiveness of the branch were warranted.¹⁵

Nixon was determined to win the next election for the presidency of the NAACP, and began appealing to potential new members to support his candidacy. He attempted to persuade potential members by calling for “a more militant N.A.A.C.P. in Montgomery, because we need a program to offer the people, because we need to return the N.A.A.C.P. to the people as their organization.” Nixon planned an organizational meeting for October 11, nearly two months before the election, to plan strategy. In a handwritten note at the bottom of one of his form letters, he asked NAACP vice president W. G. Porter to ask Ella Baker for five hundred new membership envelopes as he expected to “need these in my campaign.” In what was described as the best turnout for an election in many years, Nixon was elected as the new president. For a few years, the local chapter of the NAACP was under leadership that represented the working-class African Americans in the city. During his tenure as president, Nixon relied on a member of the working class as his secretary, a local seamstress named Rosa Parks.¹⁶

Born and raised near Montgomery, Parks attended a NAACP meeting after seeing a picture of her former schoolmate, Mrs. Johnnie Carr, next to a story about the NAACP in a local paper. When Parks arrived at the meeting, not only was her old friend absent, but Parks was the only woman in attendance. The men soon nominated and elected her secretary of the chapter. Parks later recalled: “I was too timid to say no. I just started taking minutes.” She began working with Nixon, and supported his leadership of the local and state chapters of the NAACP. She also helped establish and lead the local NAACP Youth Council. When Nixon lost the presidency of the chapter, she took a two-year break from the organization, although she continued to volunteer her time to assist Nixon. After long days working as a seamstress at Crittenden’s Tailor Shop in Montgomery, she would spend the early evening completing essential office tasks for Nixon, who had begun to focus on other activities after his tenure as NAACP president in the late 1940s. Parks was a respectable member of the African American community who worked hard to support her family financially while at the same time laboring tirelessly, often in tandem with Nixon, to bring substantive change to the racial climate in her city.¹⁷

E. D. Nixon led several local organizations over the years, including the Citizens Overall Committee, an attempt to unite Montgomery’s African Americans to address community challenges. He traced his drive to fight for civil rights to a meeting with the mayor of Montgomery during the 1920s, in which Nixon raised concerns about the safety of a drainage ditch in the city that had recently claimed the lives of two young African American boys. The mayor was not pleased that Nixon had come to city hall with the grievance, and even threatened to throw him in jail. Nixon remembered: “After that incident, I knew there would not be any recreation or any form of civil rights for black people unless they were ready and willing to get out and fight for it.” He put this philosophy into action over the following decades.¹⁸

In addition to the Citizens Overall Committee, Nixon founded the Montgomery Welfare League and also led the Progressive Democratic Action Committee, which Jo Ann Robinson described as “an old, well-established organization of black leaders, men and women. Some of the best political minds in Montgomery were in this group.” Vigilant in his attempts to highlight injustice, Nixon charged in the Alabama Tribune that some counties in Alabama had instituted “quota style racial restrictions” on African Americans following the 1952 general election, while others had prevented blacks from voting altogether. He further alleged that “5,000 Negroes have been denied the right to register and vote for no other reason than that they are Negroes.” Nixon threatened legal action to secure the ballot for black citizens in Alabama. He was never afraid to publicly challenge white leaders to ensure full citizenship for himself and all blacks in Alabama.¹⁹

Few African American men in Montgomery displayed the public courage embodied in Nixon’s rhetoric and actions. His union membership and associated job security as a Pullman porter ensured his job was secure from the retribution of local whites. Having grown up in poverty and poorly educated, Nixon made a special point to connect with the city’s working-class blacks. He understood the significant socioeconomic needs that plagued many of his friends and neighbors. Through his association with Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nixon had learned the power of ordinary people joining together for a common cause. He became their advocate, and worked not only to stir the people to action but to alert professional blacks to the dire financial and social conditions facing many in Montgomery.

Most middle-class African Americans elected to keep their distance from Nixon, however. While he had some degree of economic independence, most of them did not. When Nixon walked the streets of downtown Montgomery, he remembered “some of your so-called big people who are close to the white folks” crossing the street to avoid being seen with him. Donald Jones, in his 1945 assessment of the local NAACP chapter, characterized Nixon as “the strongest man in the community in civic affairs, pretty influential among the rank and file,” but he also had reservations about Nixon. Jones thought that Nixon “fancies himself an amateur detective” who was always trying to demonstrate some injustice in the courts toward local African Americans. The letters of correspondence between the local branch and the national office of the NAACP during the 1940s help paint a picture of Nixon as a passionate and aggressive leader who would not let the slightest injustice or insult go unchallenged. While Nixon’s tenacity was vital for change to happen in the Jim Crow South, his concern over the minutiae of local branch affairs and concerns could prove wearisome for even the most ardent activists. Even Ella Baker seemed to grow weary of Nixon’s detailed appeals to the national office for rulings to solve local disputes. Baker ended one letter to Nixon concerning the use of branch monies for a USO party for returning World War II veterans: “Nevertheless, I do not believe that the money spent for the veterans’ social should be made a major issue.” Although Nixon’s intensity could prove controversial and threatening and even exhausting to those around him, the local pastor Solomon Seay recognized in him “an entwined combination of courage and wisdom. He was well qualified to be standing at the threshold of a change in the course of history.”²⁰

Despite his bold public stands, Nixon developed a few connections with whites in Montgomery. As early as 1945, he was part of clandestine interracial gatherings at Dexter Avenue Methodist Church, a white congregation led by Reverend Andrew Turnipseed. The group met in the middle of the night to avoid reprisals. Many of those who gathered—a group that included ASC professor J. E. Pierce, Tuskegee professor Dean Gomillion, and Southern Farmer editor Gould Beech—played a role in the 1946 populist-inspired gubernatorial campaign of Jim Folsom, who served as Alabama governor from 1947 to 1951 and again from 1955 to 1959. While Turnipseed was not the only white challenging segregation in Montgomery, he claimed no other Methodist ministers publicly supported his efforts: “The other Methodist preachers here that I could count on was none. They had never been in the stirring of the water of this kind of matter.” While fellow clergy did not support his efforts, a handful of former New Deal Democrats in Montgomery brought a vibrant, if small, white contingent advocating for racial change.²¹

Following the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, many connected to his administration began to depart the capital, including Aubrey Williams, who had served as the executive director of the National Youth Administration. Williams returned to his native Alabama to purchase and run, with the financial backing of Chicago department store mogul Marshall Field, the struggling Southern Farmer magazine. He enlisted fellow New Dealer Gould Beech to serve as editor of the monthly paper, which they retooled to espouse populist and racially inclusive positions from its headquarters just outside Montgomery.²²

Given their proximity to the state capital, Williams and Gould could not resist the temptation to get involved in local and state affairs. During one election season, they even worked to find an alternative candidate for the state legislature, which they perceived to be controlled by a racial demagogue. They nominated Steven Busby, an energetic if naïve young candidate. Their goal was for Busby to garner at least 25 percent of the vote, demonstrating the presence of a significant minority of Montgomery residents who were eager for change. In the buildup to the election, Beech spoke with Nixon, who agreed to mobilize the grand total of sixty registered black voters behind their candidate. Beech and Williams rallied the liberals in town, including local labor, and surprisingly Busby won the seat. This small victory demonstrated the latent radicalism in Montgomery that could effect small changes and have an impact, provided reactionaries were unaware of the possible ramifications. Jim Folsom’s two nonconsecutive terms as governor (1947–51, 1955–59) also reveal the appeal of populist candidates in Alabama. Known as a friend of the working class, Folsom reached out to the small number of black voters in the state and refused to engage in racial demagoguery.²³

Former New Deal Democrats Clifford and Virginia Foster Durr soon joined Williams in Montgomery. Clifford had served as the first director of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Roosevelt, while Virginia had been very active in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) and the movement to abolish the poll tax. Following a brief stint in Denver, the couple returned to their native Alabama. Clifford established a law practice that counted the Southern Farmer among its clients. Virginia invested some of her time connecting with other like-minded people in the city, including Nixon and Aubrey Williams.

The racial mores of Virginia Durr’s home state shocked her after spending nearly two decades away. In a letter penned shortly after her return, she described her response to the “steady and continuous” oppression of African Americans: “It is like seeing a great stone lying on them—but it lies just as heavily on the white people too—and I feel so continually guilty that I am not doing anything about it.” Despite experiencing “constant pain” regarding the racial situation, she believed African Americans were “stirring and they won’t be held down much longer.” As New Deal Democrats who had forged friendships with southern progressives like Myles Horton, James Dombrowski, and Myles Horton, Williams and the Durrs found common ground with Nixon’s agenda to challenge both Jim Crow segregation and economic injustice.²⁴

Although she felt guilty for not being involved in efforts to challenge segregation, Virginia Durr did develop friendships with a few women, both white and black. An organization called the United Church Women, which held regular interracial prayer meetings in the city, became an important connection point for Durr. Through these meetings, Durr met women like Juliette Morgan, Olive Andrews, and Clara Rutledge.²⁵

Juliette Morgan was a local white librarian and one of the more outspoken advocates for a more racially inclusive city and state. In an editorial published in the Montgomery Advertiser, Morgan voiced support for federal action to combat “discrimination against minority groups.” Noting her opinion was in the minority, she added that “Ministers, some editors, social workers, and educators, and other thinking people are speaking out against the savage old mores of the South, otherwise referred to as ‘our Southern traditions.’” She argued that the Democratic Party slogan “White Supremacy” was “an insult to the colored races” and “a disgrace to the white,” adding that “those who insist that the states can handle civil rights are, for the most part, more concerned with maintaining the status quo than they are in securing civil rights for any minority.” While Montgomery tolerated the few who did not support white supremacy as long as they did not become too vocal, Morgan foreshadowed sentiments that would later be seen as threatening by those committed to segregation.²⁶

Morgan’s letter drew the attention of James Dombrowski, the president of the Southern Conference Education Fund. He wrote Morgan to inquire about her editorial, asking how she developed such radical views. In her response, Morgan claimed that her opinions were widely shared in Montgomery, but most were “afraid of speaking out.” To support her claim, she noted that a few of her white friends who worked to educate African Americans told her they could no longer vote under the “white supremacy” banner of the state Democratic Party. Morgan pointed to “two perfectly splendid Episcopal ministers here who are working steadily against prejudice” and “a very fine Methodist minister who never misses a chance.” She was also inspired by Jane Addams’s questions: “Who if not you? When if not now?” Morgan did not simply write about the need for racial changes in Alabama; she got involved. A committed Episcopalian, she participated in the Council on Human Relations organization headed up by her friend and local priest Thomas Thrasher. She also participated in an interracial prayer group organized in part by Olive Andrews.²⁷

Like Morgan, Andrews became active in challenging the southern way of life by working for integration. While not as outspoken as Morgan, she was very involved in efforts to organize women in the city. Andrews was one of the leaders in the effort to integrate Montgomery’s United Church Women, a program of the National Council of Churches. During the 1940s and 1950s, she was an active member of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Because of her church involvement and thanks to her reputation as a Bible teacher, Andrews received an invitation from Stillman College, a Presbyterian school for African Americans in Tuscaloosa, to teach summer classes. She later recalled her first trip to Stillman: “I went up that year and had just one little part on the program. It was the first time that I had ever been the minority. It was sort of a scary feeling when I got up to make my little presentation—to look out over all these black faces, I had never been there, in a situation like that before.” After a few years as a teacher at Stillman, Andrews was put in charge of the summer program, which in her mind was originally “very paternalistic.” Over time, things changed: “Gradually we integrated the staff. Where they formerly used to have me up in the cafeteria at different times, the staff would have a private dining room. We integrated that. We just went on and ate with all the delegates.”²⁸

Andrews soon began wrestling with the incongruity between her integrated experiences at Stillman and her segregated hometown: “I would come back to Montgomery, to the situation here, and it was very difficult. You just had to change your personality altogether almost to get back into Montgomery. That’s where I just found out that all people are just people. So we started then from that, having this little group meet for Bible Study.” The local group was all black except for Andrews until she met with Mrs. Dorothy Rogers Tilly of the Southern Regional Conference. Tilly connected Andrews with a national organization and helped her begin to network with other like-minded white women in Montgomery. The prayer group met monthly in black churches since most white congregations proved hesitant to permit an integrated meeting in their facilities. Andrews planned the agenda, arranged for speakers, and secured locations for this rare interracial gathering in the city. Virginia Durr recognized the contribution Andrews made to the community, claiming she “built the first bridge that was built in Montgomery. She put her whole soul and heart into it and she was the foundation. She really began the process of interchange between the two races on an equal basis.”²⁹

When Virginia Durr moved to Montgomery, it was Clara Rutledge who invited her to a meeting of Andrews’s prayer group, which was also called the Fellowship of the Concerned. The wife of I. B. Rutledge, who served as the chief of the local Bureau of County Aid, Clara found creative ways to join the local struggle for racial justice. She mobilized a group of white southern churchwomen who attended court hearings in Montgomery when a possible miscarriage of justice against an African American was before the court. When E. D. Nixon suspected a black defendant was not guilty in an upcoming case, he would often call Clara Rutledge, who “would fill that left hand side when you go into the old police court with white women on the front seats, on the first two or three front seats. And it was mighty hard for a judge to go too far wrong with all those white women standing there listening.” Rutledge, Andrews, and Morgan joined with Nixon and other African Americans in the early 1950s as part of a vibrant group willing to challenge racial mores in Montgomery.³⁰

Long before the NAACP or New Deal Democrats arrived on the scene, the black church was already an integral part of the lives of many of the city’s African Americans. The city’s first African American Baptist church emerged out of the white-controlled First Baptist Church in 1867 as a logical outgrowth of their desire for greater autonomy following the end of slavery. Originally called Columbus Street Baptist Church, it was later renamed the First Baptist Church by the congregation. Ten years after its founding, a small group left to form the Second Colored Baptist Church. While the exact reasons for the church split are sketchy, later explanations emphasize the role of class, suggesting that those departing Columbus Street Baptist objected to the congregation’s emotive styles of worship and the muddy entrance to the building following heavy rains. The Second Colored Baptist Church soon purchased an old slave-trader’s pen a short block from the State Capitol on the corner of Dexter and Decatur avenues. With the construction of their building on the site, the church changed its name to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.³¹

The class distinctions between First Baptist and Dexter Avenue persisted. While First Baptist remained a largely working-class congregation, many black professionals filled the pews at Dexter. Ralph David Abernathy, a graduate of Alabama State College, became the pastor of First Baptist in 1951. Abernathy regularly delineated the distinctions between the two congregations, noting that, at First Baptist, “you may preach about Jesus from the pulpit. But at Dexter, they would prefer that you not mention his name. They would prefer you talk about Plato or Socrates or somebody like that. And if you just have to mention Jesus, they would like you to do it just as quietly and briefly as possible.” Abernathy’s comments refer to the refined, educated nature of Dexter, leading outsiders to view her congregants as more concerned with projecting an educated and refined image than with striving to assist poor African Americans in Montgomery.³²

Dexter had a history of community involvement, however. Under the leadership of Robert Chapman Judkins, who served as pastor from 1905 to 1916, the congregation embraced the activism common during the Progressive Era. He founded a weekly newspaper for blacks in the area and established an annual lecture series that featured many high-profile speakers, including Booker T. Washington and Nannie Helen Burroughs. Under Judkins’s leadership, the congregation spoke out on issues of racial violence and lynching, suffrage for blacks and women, and Prohibition. During his tenure, women in the congregation were particularly active through the women’s missionary society, which urged women to pursue racial uplift through accommodationist strategies while also addressing significant health, education, and suffrage issues that affected all of Montgomery’s African American citizens. Challenged by two world wars, the Great Depression, a financial crunch, and some poor choices of pastors, Dexter struggled for over thirty years after the end of Judkins’s ministry. They had high hopes, however, when they named Vernon Johns to fill their pulpit in 1948.³³

Considered one of the most skilled black preachers in the nation, Johns impressed the people of Dexter immediately. His legendary reputation and renowned preaching ability thrilled the status-conscious congregation. Dexter deacon Robert D. Nesbitt Sr. called Johns “one of the greatest orators I have ever heard.” Johns was also known for his intelligence, evidenced by his ability to quote the great poets and Scripture from memory. Nesbitt, who had led the committee to hire Johns, claimed he “never once saw Dr. Johns read from the bible. He never needed to open a bible. He knew it from cover to cover. He could quote scripture unendingly.” When Dexter members traveled beyond Montgomery, they could proudly claim to have Vernon Johns as their pastor.³⁴

Johns was more than a brilliant man or an accomplished orator. His pursuit of justice and his courageous acts of defiance in the face of the white elite helped unearth a passion for social action and protest in Montgomery. He was unafraid to couple tough rhetoric with confrontation. One day Johns decided to take a trip on a city bus. He paid his fare at the front of the bus and prepared to find a seat. The unwritten rule on Montgomery buses was that while blacks could board in front to pay their fare, they had to get back off and reenter through the rear door to find a seat. When the driver ordered Johns to follow this practice, the pastor balked. He demanded his money back and prepared to exit, preferring to walk instead. Before leaving, he called for everybody to exit the bus in protest of such dehumanizing treatment. The rest of the riders remained silent in their seats as Johns departed alone. This lack of action frustrated Johns, but it did not cause him to shrink from confrontations with white authorities.³⁵

Johns shocked the entire city with his response to a report that police had nearly beaten a black man to death for a speeding violation. On the Dexter church billboard, located just a block from the State Capitol, Johns posted the title of his next sermon: “It’s Safe to Murder Negroes in Alabama.” Johns never shied away from proclaiming the obvious but unspoken truth regarding racial mores in Montgomery, and though many of Dexter’s black professionals feared repercussions, some also took pride in their pastor’s bold stands.³⁶

Years later, many remembered the significant role Johns’s activism played in preparing the community for the coming civil rights movement. Although the recollections of Dexter members give Johns too much credit for the community’s later activism, they accurately emphasize his boldness. According to J. E. Pierce, a professor of political science at ASC and member of Dexter, Johns was “a very militant person, and he did not stand back.” Prior to Johns’s ministry, Pierce contended that the African American community was paralyzed by fear. While not all African Americans in Montgomery were afraid, those with the courage of Johns were few and far between. Pierce believed Johns planted seeds of resistance that bore fruit years later through the courageous days of the bus boycott. Dexter member Rufus Lewis concurred, noting that Johns “was a militant man in that anything that happened in the community, he would talk about it in the church in regards to denying Negroes their rights. He would preach about it.” Eugene Ligon, who was the owner and operator of a Montgomery diner called the Regal Café, claimed that Johns “was the focal point of things that concerned the black community. He had the power of speaking and persuasion to get people to listen to him; and they did.” A published history of Dexter described Johns’s tenure in glowing terms: “His dramatic teachings aroused not only the Dexter family, but thousands of citizens of Montgomery to the social transition which was taking place in the Southern way of life. Of him it was said ‘he kindled the flame of thought in the citizens of Montgomery.’ His sermons were relevant to social and contemporary problems but were highlighted by a spiritual base.” Although in retrospect the people of Dexter admired Johns, his willingness to rock the boat both within the church and in the broader community frightened many. A growing number of Dexter members began to view Johns as a threat to their dignity and even their livelihood.³⁷

Dexter’s reputation was well established throughout the community. Fred Gray, who attended ASC from 1947 to 1951 and returned to Montgomery in 1954 as the city’s second black attorney, developed some strong impressions of the congregation. He believed Dexter “was not known as a church that would get involved in real community projects. It was more or less a church of the black middle class and had not been very active in any community activities that I can recall, and certainly nothing that could be interpreted as being controversial because you had a lot of persons there who were in the education field.” Gray’s reflections correctly identified at least one of the factors influencing many in the congregation to evade controversy: their employment as educators. Not only were the city’s primary and secondary public schools under the authority of white officials, but Alabama State was largely funded through the State of Alabama, making its teachers vulnerable to white reprisals. Simply put, if they wanted to remain secure in their positions, teachers and professors knew to steer clear of controversial actions in the community.³⁸

Though some feared possible repercussions under Johns’s leadership, he inspired others with his boldness. Among those influenced by Johns’s challenges was Dexter member Mary Fair Burks. In the early 1950s, Burks founded the most significant African American group working for social change in Montgomery during that time: the Women’s Political Council (WPC). Burks later claimed the WPC was “the outgrowth of scars I suffered as a result of racism as well as my desire to arouse black middle-class women to do something about the things they could change in segregated Montgomery.” One day while driving through Montgomery, Burks narrowly missed a white woman who darted into a crosswalk after the light had turned green. A police officer witnessed the close call and promptly arrested Burks. Following a brief time in jail, she “resolved to do something more about segregation besides waging my own personal war. My arrest convinced me that defiance alone would do little or nothing to remedy such situations. Only organized effort could do that.” The following Sunday, Johns’s sermon included one of his usual attacks on the complacency of the congregation’s members. Burks heeded the reproach by directly challenging black women in Montgomery to get involved, noting that their “outward indifference was a mask to protect their psyche and their sanity.”³⁹

Burks immediately got to work developing the new organization. She personally contacted fifty women for an initial meeting, with the hope that a new group could address some of Montgomery’s most pressing racial problems. The WPC was not Montgomery’s first significant gathering of African American women seeking change in the city. In addition to very active women’s ministries at Dexter, the city had various black women’s clubs, including the Ten Times One Is Ten Club, an organization founded in 1888 to support racial uplift and philanthropy. Anna Duncan established another prominent black women’s club in 1897. The Twentieth Century Club, which was later renamed the Anna M. Duncan Club, focused on supporting African American culture and engaging in philanthropic efforts. Soon after its founding, the group became a significant organizing force for the National Association of Colored Women. The organization’s club song includes the following lyrics: “Our race must be enlightened, we must earn our daily bread, we must give our time and talent and the hungry must be fed.” The song’s closing solidifies the uplift ideology that fueled the club in its early years: “Lifting others is our motto, We’re lifting as we climb.” The Women’s Political Council hoped to build on the rich history of the more established black women’s clubs in the community by adopting a more politically engaged approach.⁴⁰

Burks’s vision for a new women’s organization struck a chord in the community, particularly given the refusal of Montgomery’s League of Women Voters to accept African American members. Forty women attended the inaugural meeting and most backed the idea with great enthusiasm. The newly formed organization settled on a three-pronged approach. First, they would pursue political action, including voter registration and evaluating candidates. Second, they would seek to remedy abuses on city buses and segregation in the city park system. Third, they would set their sights on education, including helping high school students better understand democracy and teaching literacy to adults so their language would be proficient enough to be able to register to vote.⁴¹

The formation of the WPC reveals that not all ASC professors cowered in fear. The organization’s most influential base was near the Alabama State campus, which served as the location for the group’s original chapter. The charter member Thelma Glass confirmed that it was “made up of persons like me who were in at the University and school teachers and others in the city and what not—and some outstanding religious leaders—women who had always shown interest in making things better.” Another early member was Mrs. Irene West, who was a graduate of Alabama State Normal School and the widow of a dentist. One of the older women involved in the organization, West brought them instant credibility with many in the city’s African American community. Local pastor Solomon Seay described West as “a fearless woman who was involved in every movement that had as its goal the freedom of her race.” With the support of many of the city’s most prominent black women, the WPC was primed to play a critical role in local politics.⁴²

No member of the WPC was more active than Jo Ann Robinson. She came to Montgomery to teach English at ASC, and her willingness to seek justice for blacks in the segregated South crystallized soon after. Following her first semester at ASC, Robinson prepared to visit her family in Ohio for Christmas. Although she owned a car, she elected to take a bus to the airport to avoid the hassle of long-term parking. Not used to riding public transportation, Robinson boarded the bus, paid her fare, and took an available seat near the front. The driver began instructing her to move almost at once, but she was so surprised by his words that she froze. Soon the driver was standing above her shouting, “Get up from there.” Unaware of the Jim Crow laws governing buses in the city and humiliated by the treatment she received from the driver, Robinson quickly exited and found other transportation to the airport. As she reflected on this dehumanizing episode, Robinson’s resolve to get involved in changing the climate in Montgomery grew. Her most significant role in the local struggle was as president of the WPC.⁴³

When Robinson replaced Burks as head of the WPC, she brought a more activist and confrontational spirit to the organization. Although Robinson did not completely overhaul the WPC when she assumed the presidency, she did lead the organization into addressing the mistreatment of African American passengers on city buses and to confront the city commission. Robinson herself admits that by the early 1950s the WPC had become the “go-to” organization for Montgomery blacks who had issues or grievances they wanted the city to address. In 1953 alone, they received well over thirty citizen complaints against the bus company.⁴⁴

As early as 1952, the WPC began raising concerns about the treatment of black passengers on city buses to the city commission. Their complaints included a seating arrangement that reserved the front ten seats for whites, whether the bus had any white riders or not. If whites boarded the bus and there were no available seats in the first ten rows, the black passengers in the seats closest to the front were frequently ordered by the driver to relinquish their seats. Adding to the frustration was the lack of courtesy displayed by drivers, who were granted police powers while on duty. In a public hearing held by the city commission on the possibility of raising fares on the city bus lines, the WPC made their concerns known. Led by Mrs. Zolena J. Pierce (wife of the political science professor J. E. Pierce) and Mrs. Sadie Brooks (wife of Joseph Brooks, Trenholm’s assistant), they pleaded for the city to make immediate changes, but the only response they received was an agreement by the commission to take the WPC proposal under advisement. Leaders of the WPC met directly with city commissioners in November and December 1953. Again they raised concerns shared by many in the African American community, including frustrations with the buses, but to no avail. Despite a lack of early success, the WPC demonstrated a tireless commitment to challenge the racial status quo that would become more evident in the coming years. They were not alone.⁴⁵

Among the more committed African American activists in Montgomery was another Dexter member: Rufus Lewis. A graduate of Fisk University and the former coach of the ASC football team, Lewis labored to provide educational opportunities to black veterans returning from World War II. He was also a very successful businessman who oversaw the largest black funeral home business in the city. According to Montgomery pastor Solomon Seay, Lewis applied his business acumen to the local struggle. The primary focus of his activities was to help blacks register to vote, a task he organized through his leadership of an organization called the Citizens Steering Committee. Thelma Glass called Lewis “one of the hardest workers in voter registration that I’ve ever met in my life.”⁴⁶

In a climate of poll taxes, literacy tests, and comprehension tests, many blacks had to attempt to register several times before they were finally put on the voting rolls. One of the greatest challenges was keeping local African Americans motivated enough to try to register. Lewis claimed that he dedicated his life to helping people overcome all barriers that would prevent them from participating in the electoral process: “My labors in this area commenced years before the bus boycott or the protest movement commenced. I used to go around to the homes of adults and business establishments owned by Black people and encourage them to go to the courthouse and register to vote.” To provide a greater incentive for his fellow citizens to register, Lewis opened a nightclub called the Citizens Club that was open only to registered voters. Partially inspired by Vernon Johns, Dexter congregants like Burks, Robinson, and Lewis began to work tirelessly to advance the cause of African Americans in Montgomery.⁴⁷

Johns was not only seeking political and educational advancement, however. He also campaigned tirelessly for greater black economic development to benefit the working class. Dexter parishioner Thelma Rice remembers a warm afternoon when she was approached by Johns, who was busy selling eggs to passersby. What began as an attempt to peddle eggs became a discussion regarding what blacks in Montgomery needed most, with each settling on economic advances. In Rice’s view, Johns was so convinced of the need for a viable economic base among African Americans that “he lived it and practiced it.” One of the ways he demonstrated his concern for economic community development was to establish an African American food cooperative known as the Farm and City Enterprises. He hoped the dollar would begin to turn over several times within the black community, creating jobs while providing greater economic independence from white Montgomery.⁴⁸

For many in the congregation, Johns’s practice of selling vegetables, fruits, and occasionally honey-cured hams from the church basement on Sunday afternoons was cause for embarrassment. Johns’s lack of decorum, his impatience, and his bad temper led many of Dexter’s leaders to seek a change in pastoral leadership. Dexter member Warren Brown later referred to Johns as “a hot-tempered individual.” Johns’s militancy limited how much impact he could have within the walls of Dexter and in the broader community. Nesbitt shared this assessment: “Dr. Johns had a vision and the depth needed to lead, but he was too violent. His philosophy was ‘I want it and I want it now.’”⁴⁹

The congregation’s deacon board had a long history of controlling the church’s pastors, but Johns had his own agenda. During his five years at Dexter, Johns and the church leaders were in a perpetual power struggle. One area of disagreement was the church’s refusal to use black spirituals in their worship services. While Johns agreed with Dexter’s general disdain for emotionalism, he was very fond of traditional spirituals, believing they represented a part of their history they ought to embrace and celebrate. The church’s embarrassment of their own heritage irritated Johns. Occasionally he would attempt to add an unplanned spiritual to the service. From the pulpit he would interrupt the planned service and demand that the organist play “I Got Shoes” or “Go Down, Moses,” but never successfully. Johns’s decision to go to the campus of ASC to sell watermelons marked the beginning of the end for his tenure at Dexter. For many of the ASC faculty, this was the last straw, especially when Johns embarrassed them on their home turf of the college campus. Another battle with the deacons ensued, leading Johns to announce that he would be preaching his farewell sermon on May 3, 1953. The board saw their chance and acted quickly, accepting Johns’s announcement that he had preached his farewell sermon and declaring the pulpit vacant. Although Johns refused to vacate the parsonage until the church had the city turn off the home’s utilities, his days as Dexter’s pastor were over.⁵⁰

In the end, the benefits of retaining Vernon Johns could not outweigh the difficulties his ministry imposed on the congregation. The majority of congregation members were simply too embarrassed by Johns’s undignified peddling of fruit and too fearful of white reprisal for his boldness. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church had a pastoral vacancy that would not be filled for nearly a year. Johns’s dismissal reveals the reticence of many African Americans in Montgomery to publicly challenge the white power structure, even vicariously, as through a pastor or community leader. They knew that violating any of the South’s racial mores could have tragic results, as the story of Jeremiah Reeves demonstrates.

In late 1952, authorities arrested Reeves, a seventeen-year-old African American, for allegedly robbing, assaulting, and raping forty-six-year-old Mrs. Frances Prescott. While rumors persisted that Reeves and his supposed victim were actually having an affair, his trial proved to be an opportunity to reinforce the threat of the black male to the southern way of life. A few days after the jury found Reeves guilty and sentenced him to death, the story of a nineteen-year-old African American named John Smith made the local papers. According to an editorial on the incident, Smith “was chased 20 miles, fired at by a would-be captor, and scared half to death—all out of ‘mistake.’” Calling the situation “a graphic illustration of the way mob hysteria develops,” they quoted a local farmer who said he “wanted to kill the Negro but couldn’t get close enough. Another pursuer shot at him.” Citing the Reeves case, they claimed that “the hysteria which threatened Smith is partly understandable.” In the minds of many whites in Montgomery, the threat of black males harming or even raping white women made the most unjust actions “partly understandable.” There is no indication in the newspaper that the authorities charged the man who shot at Smith with any crime.⁵¹

The Reeves trial and conviction reminded white men how important it was to publicly fight for segregation lest they put white women at risk. Black men took note of how quickly an all-white jury sentenced Reeves to death and undoubtedly heard about the twenty-mile chase of John Smith. African American males who transgressed the racial code, or were even suspected of doing so, put their lives at risk. White women were reminded that their reputations were at stake should they cross racial lines. Black women, however, continued to operate below the surface. Not viewed as a threat and barely noticed by white society, black women had the freedom to challenge racism by stealth. Even when they negotiated with the mayor in his office, the community barely noticed. While black women were not alone in fighting white supremacy in Montgomery at midcentury, their voices were some of the most consistent. Though many black men in the city were just as frustrated with the racial status quo, they had more to lose by being outspoken. Whites believed they had much more to fear from black men, and therefore they responded more quickly, and often violently, to any who got out of line. As whites fixed their attention on black men, several black women were stirring the waters of racial change in Montgomery.

In December 1953, Alabama’s capital city appeared calm. On the surface, blacks and whites alike seemed fully acclimated to the mores of southern race relations. Most whites in the city felt they lived in a city of racial harmony. With the departure of the fearless Vernon Johns, some whites breathed a sigh of relief. Still there was a stirring of the waters in Montgomery as people from both races worked to unleash an assault on segregation. Nixon and Parks had not lost their concern for a movement to secure changes that would benefit the tens of thousands of working-class African Americans in and around Montgomery. Beneath the surface, the waters were stirring. Dexter member Thelma Rice remembered: “African-Americans in Montgomery were not as soft and idle in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the public has been led to believe. Years before the bus boycott numerous organizations composed of and headed by African Americans were working to secure civil rights for the race locally.” A few hours’ drive east of Montgomery, a young doctoral student named Martin Luther King Jr. was ready for a place to put his pastoral training into action. Within a few months, King would join those in Montgomery eager to challenge white supremacy.⁵²