5

“Living under the Tension”

They begin to wonder all over the nation, how is it we can keep walking in Montgomery? How is it we can keep burning out our rubber? How is it we can keep living under the tension? And we can cry out to the nation, “We can do it because we know that as we walk, God walks with us.”

—Martin Luther King Jr., September 1956

Just a few short days after the bombing of his home, King delivered a sermon at Dexter with a title he could easily embrace: “It’s Hard to Be a Christian.” The past two months of King’s life had been extremely challenging. As the most visible face of the bus boycott, he had become a lightning rod for criticism, threats, and even violence. Despite his sufferings, King reminded the people of Dexter that the Christian faith is by definition costly. This was not time to substitute “a cushion for a cross” or to have “a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.” He called for a more authentic Christianity that is by definition “hard because it demands a dangerous and costly altruism. It demands that the ‘I’ be immersed in the deep waters of ‘thou.’” The people of Dexter knew they were not the only Christians in Montgomery. That same morning, hymns were emanating from the all-white Dexter Avenue Methodist Church just a block away. The hypocrisy of many of Montgomery’s white Christians was fair game this Sunday, as King blasted “white people who are for justice” but who are “afraid to speak.” King concluded by reminding his congregation that Christianity demands “putting our whole being in the struggle against evil, whatever the cost.”¹

The coming eleven months would prove to be costly for many involved in the local struggle. In addition to facing varied and perpetual manifestations of white racism, King and other boycott leaders tried to keep the community united in purpose. Accusations that the MIA had mismanaged funds would add to the pressures facing King and other leaders. In response, they sought to maintain unity by closing ranks. Vigorous debate over the direction of the local movement became less regular as clergy gained greater power within the MIA. Meanwhile, E. D. Nixon’s role diminished over the course of the year. Living under the tension of segregation, white attacks, and internal conflict, leaders fixed all their energies on a skirmish over bus policies while economic initiatives were relegated to the back burner. Much of the early promise for a local sustained assault on white supremacy never materialized. They failed to develop concrete plans for African American economic development after the boycott. The MIA would win the battle over buses, but the tension they lived under each day would leave the larger war for equality and justice unresolved.

The January 30, 1956, bombing of King’s home was but the most sensational result of the “get-tough” policy toward boycott participants of Montgomery mayor William “Tacky” Gayle. Despite the onslaught, King and the people did not back down. Instead they went on the offensive, going ahead with plans to file suit in federal courts claiming bus segregation was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Filing the lawsuit ran contrary to the original demands of the MIA, but as early as the evening of Parks’s arrest, Nixon and others had in mind the notion of a test case to strike down segregation on the city’s buses. The intransigence of the city commissioners coupled with the use of violence convinced the leadership of the MIA that only the courts would settle this issue, and that meant challenging segregation.²

The MIA leadership could not ignore the violence. An attempted bombing of Nixon’s home on February 1 reinforced the sober reality that any of them might be next. At an executive board meeting just a few days later, King addressed a recent “increase in the amount of violence” and innumerable threats since the city’s commissioners “joined the white Citizens Council.” In response, the MIA beefed up security measures for mass meetings, but King insisted: “We’re not going to give up; they can drop bombs in my house every day. I’m firmer now than ever.”³

The first task for attorney Fred Gray in developing the case that would become Browder v. Gayle was finding a group of people willing to serve as plaintiffs. He elected not to make Rosa Parks part of the case so as not to complicate her criminal proceedings. Aurelia Browder, a Montgomery housewife, became the named plaintiff for the case, which was filed the morning of February 2. She was joined by seventy-seven-year-old Susie McDonald, two teenagers named Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, and Mrs. Jeanetta Reese. Once the suit was filed, the city moved to try to discredit both the legal maneuver and Fred Gray, the attorney representing the MIA. After Gray launched a legal attack on segregated buses, Jeanetta Reese pulled out under pressure from white authorities. As a result, some white leaders engaged in a concerted effort to have Gray disbarred in the state. A similar strategy had proven effective a decade earlier, when Montgomery officials convinced a court to disbar African American attorney Arthur A. Madison, who had led a large group of blacks to register to vote at the county courthouse in the fall of 1943. When they were all summarily rejected, Madison filed suit on behalf of sixteen of the applicants. In February 1944, six of the plaintiffs claimed they had not authorized Madison to file the lawsuit. Most of these were public school teachers and were thus vulnerable to white backlash expressed through the termination of their jobs. Authorities arrested Madison for filing false court documents, fined him $2,500, and disbarred him in the State of Alabama.⁴

On the day Gray filed the lawsuit, the board of the MIA already had heard rumors that Reese had withdrawn her name from the case. Although she had retained Gray as her attorney, she later claimed that he acted without her consent. Segregationists moved swiftly, as reports had Reese going to the mayor’s office the very day the lawsuit was filed. Once word spread about Reese’s involvement in the case, threatening phone calls to her followed. Reese worked for a high-ranking police official who brought a lot of pressure on her to drop her role in the case, which she did. MIA leaders responded with resolve, reassuring the rest of the plaintiffs that they had the full support of the organization. The intimidation efforts were directed at Rosa Parks as well. She reported to the MIA executive board that “some strange men have been coming in my neighborhood inquiring about the woman who caused all of this trouble.” In response, the MIA decided to ensure that Parks had protection at night.⁵

In addition to intimidation, violence, and legal maneuvers, some local white Baptists sought to strip the MIA of their office space. Early on the MIA had set up offices at the Baptist Center, a facility donated by the Southern Baptists to assist with ministry among the city’s African American population. During the early 1950s, the center was a source of pride in the Southern Baptist’s annual reports. The Baptist Center director, Reverend Glasco, an African American member of the MIA board, reported that the superintendent of missions had decided the MIA would have to move their offices “due to the lengthy run of the movement and since it has taken on a political angle.” Glasco added that prior to this, every decision regarding the center’s operation had been made by African Americans, but this was imposed by whites. King responded to this news decisively, noting: “I think the position of the white Baptists is that they’re just against it. I don’t want to accept anything from them.” After exploring various alternatives, the board elected to move the offices to Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church.⁶

King’s response to the barrage of white reprisals did not end with his leadership of the MIA. He also took personal steps in an attempt to provide a greater degree of protection for his family. Less than a week after the bombing of his home, King agreed to an interview with Fisk University researcher Donald Ferron. While King’s public announcements that week were bold, notes from the interview reveal he was definitely on edge. At one point, King stood up, looked out the front window, and said, “I thought somebody was putting something on the porch.” This nervousness and fear led him to have a meeting with Governor Jim Folsom, who had a reputation as being supportive of greater rights for blacks. According to King, following the bombing of his parsonage Folsom had “promised us protection and said he would talk to the mayor.”⁷

At the MIA board meeting on February 2, King noted that he had gone to the sheriff’s office in an attempt to get a gun permit for the men who were guarding his house but he “couldn’t get one.” King argued the sheriff’s denial of a gun permit was tantamount to saying, “you are at the disposal of the hoodlums.” In the interview, Ferron asked King about effective strategies for racial change, to which King replied: “Somebody told me a whale puts up its biggest fight after it has been harpooned. It’s the same thing with the Southern white man. Maybe its [sic] good to shed a little blood. What needs to be done is for a couple of those white men to lose some blood; then the Federal Government will step in.” While it would be a stretch to say that King embraced violence as a strategy, he had not yet adopted nonviolence as a life commitment. King’s response to the bombing demonstrates that his overall commitment to nonviolence had not fully formed.⁸

Over the next few weeks, however, King had the opportunity to spend time with Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley, two avowed pacifists who helped King infuse his love ethic with the ideology of nonviolence. Rustin, a civil rights veteran, arrived in Montgomery at the behest of novelist Lillian Smith, who believed King and the MIA would benefit from greater instruction in nonviolence. Rustin had spent time working with the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and in 1956 was serving as the executive secretary of the War Resisters League. Rustin was a close associate of the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Philip Randolph, and a student of Gandhian nonviolence. He also had a past that, if discovered, could embarrass the Montgomery movement. In addition to a brief period when he was a part of the Young Communist League, Rustin had served a prison sentence for resisting the draft and had been convicted for sodomy just three years earlier. Because of these concerns, some of Rustin’s associates encouraged him not to go to Montgomery at all, but in the end Randolph and pacifist A. J. Muste deemed his value to King and the nascent Montgomery movement significant enough to justify his visit. Upon his arrival in the city, Rustin was struck by the tension he witnessed. He noted that both King and Abernathy had shifts of men watching their homes every night. MIA leaders warned Rustin that he would be under white surveillance and therefore ought to take necessary precautions.⁹

As an outsider, Rustin spent his first few days attempting to better understand the climate in the city. One evening he went to visit Jeanetta Reese, who had withdrawn her name as a plaintiff from the lawsuit filed by Fred Gray. He was shocked by what he found at Reese’s home: “Although the police had provided no protection for King and Nixon after their houses had been bombed, I found two squad cards parked before Mrs. Reese’s home.” After negotiating with police to be allowed to approach Reese’s home, all he could get her to say was, “I had to do what I did or I wouldn’t be alive today.”¹⁰

King invited Rustin to participate in nearly all MIA events during his visit. The two men also had several extensive discussions regarding the principle of nonviolence. A few days after Rustin’s arrival, Glenn Smiley, a white FOR official, joined Rustin in Montgomery. Like Rustin, Smiley had the opportunity to spend significant time with King discussing the principles of the movement, including the relevance of Gandhi’s leadership and ideas to what was happening in Montgomery. According to Smiley’s reflections on the conversations, King admitted regarding Gandhi, “I will have to say that I know very little about the man.” King had heard of Gandhi many times at Morehouse, but he had never studied his thought in depth.¹¹

Soon after Smiley’s arrival, a letter came to him from New York informing him that Randolph and others had decided Rustin needed to leave Montgomery, in part due to a lukewarm response to his presence by many in leadership with the MIA. Several local leaders feared Rustin wanted to influence the direction of the movement and receive credit for some of its successes: “There is some danger that Bayard is indicating that he has had more to do with what is happening, than he actually has.” Although Smiley proved less forceful and abrasive to the MIA leadership, he shared a paternalistic attitude toward those in Montgomery: “we can learn from their courage and plain earthly devices for building morale, etc., but they can learn more from us, for being so new at this, King runs out of ideas quickly and does the old things again and again. He wants help, and we can give it to him without attempting to run the movement.” Rustin and Smiley would both be significant figures in continuing to shape and develop King’s thoughts and philosophy regarding nonviolence by providing a philosophical framework for what was happening in Montgomery. Their impact on the boycott itself was minimal, however. Although King was not a complete advocate of nonviolence prior to the boycott, he passionately expressed a commitment to an ethic of love and nonviolence in both the December 1955 Holt Street address and in his unprepared remarks following the bombing of his home in January 1956. Rustin and Smiley helped sand and polish King’s philosophy of nonviolence, yet it was the people’s willingness to boycott Montgomery’s buses that brought King’s nonviolent leanings to the surface in the first place.¹²

The MIA struggled to find appropriate responses in part because white attacks came from so many different directions. Many working-class whites expressed their solidarity with the city commissioners by joining the local White Citizens Council, which became the community’s largest white organization by the end of January. On February 10, more than ten thousand turned out for a WCC gathering to hear Mississippi senator James Eastland. During the rally, the crowd applauded the resolve of city leaders in the face of the bus boycott. Using the methods of intimidation and economic reprisals against those participating in the boycott, the ranks of the WCC were bolstered by union members, who had a history of local resistance to interracial policies advocated by the national AFL-CIO. In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions, many local unions even threatened to break away from their national organizations. Four of the seven members of the Montgomery WCC executive board were union members, leading attorney Clifford Durr to label most of the members of the citizens’ council “riff-raff” rather than people of any real prominence. Despite Durr’s dismissive appraisal, the numbers of laborers who joined the council made it an organization of significant white resistance during the boycott. Union members continued to bolster the ranks as each round of bus-driver layoffs sparked greater anger and bitterness. During the boycott, Montgomery’s Carpenters Hall, where many unions met for their meetings, even became a locus of Ku Klux Klan activity.¹³

White resistance to racial equality included the clergy. During the week after the bombing of King’s home, a Fisk university researcher interviewed G. Stanley Frazier, who served as the pastor of St. James Methodist Church in Montgomery. A member of the WCC, Frazier attacked the MIA for attempting to use “the church as an instrument to destroy segregation.” Frazier claimed that “both races prefer segregation” and that the boycott was ultimately an attempt to force integration on the people of Montgomery.¹⁴

Political leaders also dug in their heels as the boycott wore on. Montgomery mayor, William “Tacky” Gayle, when asked what was the root cause of the bus boycott, responded: “Segregation. They want to destroy our whole social fabric. We have laws that they want to ignore.” Gayle complained that white women who were driving their maids to work and back were partly responsible for the success of the boycott. Virginia Durr recalled the response of many of Montgomery’s white women: “If the mayor wants to do my washing and ironing and cooking and cleaning and raise my children, let him come out here and do it.” Durr was quick to point out that most white women did not overtly support the boycott. Still, their self-interest prevailed over the social and legal issues that were in play.¹⁵

Former city commissioner Dave Birmingham, a year after his electoral defeat, weighed in on the boycott as well. He cited four primary causes for the protest, including “the tendency of mulattoes to want to bring about integration,” the end of segregation in the armed forces (particularly significant with the proximity of Maxwell Air Force Base), the Brown v. Board of Education rulings, and the Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks cases. Although Birmingham had received significant African American support during his candidacy, he was not a supporter of the boycott. MIA attorney Fred Gray believed that had Birmingham been in office, the boycott may not have happened.¹⁶ Certainly his relationship with Nixon could have served as a conduit for negotiations during the early weeks of the protest. His opportunity for real influence would have been very early in December, however. If an early settlement had not been brokered, it is very doubtful that Birmingham would have greatly influenced the course of the boycott in any substantive way.¹⁷

Joe Azbell, an editor with the Montgomery Advertiser, was one of many whites who believed blacks simply lacked gratitude for all the whites had done for them over the years. Claiming African Americans benefited from “85 % of every tax dollar” while paying only 15 percent of local taxes, he questioned their wisdom in upsetting the paternalistic relationship that had served the city so well for decades. In Azbell’s opinion, the boycott was “a slap in the face after all [whites] have done for them and all that good feeling that was there has been destroyed.” He believed whites were not concerned about the boycott and “are glad the ‘Nigra’ are off the buses. They don’t want them back on, they don’t care if they never ride the buses again. I have had lots of calls from white people since my column asking me why I wanted to settle it—they said they were glad the black bastards were off the buses and to let them stay off. That is how the white people feel.” He then attacked the morality of blacks, claiming they purchased 80 percent of the whiskey sold in the city. Azbell’s reckless reliance on spurious racialized statistics demonstrates how little empathy he had for the MIA or its cause.¹⁸

Other whites took bold countercultural stands in support of the boycott, often at great personal cost. Librarian Juliette Morgan, who had written an editorial to the Montgomery Advertiser in December praising the boycott, faced significant backlash. Some patrons claimed they would no longer take advantage of library services as long as Morgan remained on the payroll. Although Morgan’s mother, Lili Bess Olin Morgan, did not support her daughter’s views, she did allow Juliette to stay with her during the first few months of the boycott. Some of the feedback to Morgan’s letter was positive, revealing the complexity of the white community’s attitude during this season of tension and upheaval. Morgan even claimed that most of the responders to her editorial “agreed with me, and said they would have liked to say the same thing themselves, but they couldn’t for various reasons. Most of them are afraid—the kind of fear that is silly in the long run, but I guess in the short run, maybe there is something in it.” Morgan also reflected on her controversial standing in the community: “I feel like we don’t have much to gain, or to lose, in this life and none of it is worth much if we feel like we can’t stand up for the things we believe in. Maybe I’m an exception and I’m more secure than most people, but I feel like what I have to lose isn’t worth being silent. I pay for it in my stomach, but I would pay for it more if I didn’t say the things I think I should. I think that the real basis for silence in situations like this is greed. Not greed in the ordinary sense, but greed in the sense that people are fearful of losing what they have.” While Morgan continued to support the boycott throughout, she remained frustrated by the silence of prominent whites “who want to say something, but are afraid to speak out.”¹⁹

Like Morgan, the women of the Fellowship of the Concerned were not afraid to challenge white supremacy. The local organization conducted a workshop in March at Trinity Lutheran Church titled “The Supreme Court Decision—Building Community Understanding.” Olive Andrews attended the workshop and commented on the intentional mispronunciation of “Negro”: “We here in Montgomery know how to pronounce Negro, for our Negroes are our heroes.” Later Andrews noted that the city ordinance against segregated meetings did not apply to churches. Clifford and Virginia Durr also worked behind the scenes to assist the protestors. The Durrs had joined E. D. Nixon in bailing Rosa Parks out of jail and were present as Nixon attempted to convince Parks and her family to allow her arrest to be a test case to challenge the city’s segregation laws. As the boycott continued, Clifford Durr immersed himself in the legal challenges facing the MIA. Although he was never the attorney of record, he provided extensive legal assistance to Fred Gray.²⁰

They were joined in their efforts by Robert Graetz, the only white clergy member to join the MIA. Graetz believed that there were a number of whites in the city who were in favor of change, citing the presence of the Alabama Council on Human Relations. In his view, the largest segment of white support for the boycott came from the wives of businessmen in the city. Graetz also believed that about half the white ministers in the city were on the side of the boycotters, and hoped many of these would stand up and be counted in the near future.²¹

Some white business leaders tried to play a mediating role as the conflict continued. The previous year they had developed a group known as the Men of Montgomery in an attempt to help the city advance economically. Although many segregationists belonged to the organization, King felt “they were open-minded enough to listen to another point of view and discuss the problem of race intelligently.” They were particularly concerned about the negative national press directed toward Montgomery thanks to the boycott. In February, the group set up meetings with both the city and some MIA leaders in an attempt to broker a settlement. G. T. Fitzpatrick, who ran Empire-Rouse Laundry, described their talks in extremely patronizing terms: “we had several long sessions with them and while we were dealing with what you might call the upper crust—the ministers and teachers—we had to treat them pretty much like children—lead them along by the hand, so to speak. All of us businessmen agreed we could have done the same thing in two or three hours, but had to sit with it through two or three sessions lasting that long.” Despite this paternalism, the conversations between the MIA and the Men of Montgomery held some promise for a solution.²²

Representatives of the Men of Montgomery met with some MIA leaders on a few occasions during mid-February. Many of the business leaders believed they had reached an agreement to settle the boycott at their final meeting, having secured the endorsement of their plan by both the bus company and the city commissioners. When the proposal was taken to a mass meeting on February 20, it was voted down by a reported margin of 3,998 to 2. Business leader G. T. Matthews noted that the MIA leaders had claimed that they were simply representatives of the organization, and any decisions would be subject to the approval of the people. Matthews did not fully believe this claim, noting “if the leaders wanted to settle it, they could have. The ministers are running the thing and their congregations will follow them. You know how they are. Most of them are ignorant and they will do whatever their preachers tell them.” Fitzgerald did concede that the roughly two hundred black workers at his plant had been extremely disciplined throughout the boycott and had continued to be very productive workers, noting “from a purely selfish standpoint, the boycott has been a good thing for my plant.” While the business leaders were undoubtedly prejudiced, King later reflected that, had it not been for the “recalcitrance of the city commission,” the MIA and Men of Montgomery may have worked out a deal.²³

Some boycott leaders and participants were surprised more people did not endorse the settlement. The agreement included reserving ten seats at the front of the buses for white patrons and ten at the back for African American riders, as well as a guarantee for greater courtesy on the buses. According to Alabama State College professor Lawrence Reddick, after nearly three months of the boycott many carpool drivers were growing weary. Some were driving four or five hours a day on top of their jobs, family responsibilities, and other obligations. In light of the federal suit filed to attempt to end bus segregation, the outcome of the bus situation in Montgomery no longer seemed to rise or fall based on the continuance of the boycott. In the end, the courts would decide the most pressing questions. Based on these concerns, the leaders elected to submit the Men of Montgomery proposal to the people. According to Reddick, the nearly unanimous rejection of the proposed settlement “revived the morale of the leaders.” The MIA did offer their appreciation for the Men of Montgomery’s “very fine exemplification of good will and its willingness to see justice prevail in the city for all citizens.”²⁴

Few white leaders embodied a passion for justice, however. In the wake of the MIA’s decision to launch a court case seeking an end to segregated buses in Montgomery, the city decided to take legal action against the boycott itself. While King was delivering a series of lectures at Fisk University in Nashville, the grand jury indicted 115 boycott participants, charging they were in violation of an obscure 1921 law in Alabama prohibiting conspiracies that sought to undermine legal business and commerce. The February 21 indictment charged that King and others “did, without just cause or legal excuse for so doing, enter into a combination, conspiracy, agreement, arrangement, or understanding for the purpose of hindering, delaying, or preventing Montgomery City Lines, Inc., a corporation, from carrying on lawful business.” The list of those charged was riddled with errors and inaccuracies that resulted in lowering the total number indicted to eighty-nine. The morning after the grand jury’s decision, many boycott participants set out for the police station. Nixon was first to enter, saying: “You are looking for me? Here I am.” While white officials were surprised to see such a willingness to submit to arrest, the boldness of the leaders excited and encouraged participants who gathered to watch the proceedings. Meanwhile, King left Nashville early and flew to Atlanta, where Coretta and their daughter, Yolanda, were staying with his parents.²⁵

Daddy King was ready for his son’s arrival. Concerned that the Montgomery authorities were out to get his son, Daddy King assembled a number of family friends in an attempt to convince King Jr. to remain in Atlanta for the time being. Among those present was King Jr.’s mentor and Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays. Despite the pleadings of his father and many respected elders gathered at his parents’ home, King never wavered from his resolve to return to Montgomery. Reflecting on the meeting, King remembered saying: “I must go back to Montgomery. My friends and associates are being arrested. It would be the height of cowardice for me to stay away. I would rather be in jail ten years than desert my people now. I have begun the struggle, and I can’t turn back.” Hearing King’s words, Dr. Mays began to defend the decision to return to Montgomery, and others soon relented as well. Early on February 23, Daddy King joined his son’s family as they drove to Montgomery. In what he later described as a “holiday atmosphere,” King went to the courthouse, where he was arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, and then released on bail. That evening at a prayer meeting held at Abernathy’s First Baptist Church, King addressed a crowd of several thousand. He reminded his audience that their goal was not racial conflict but to bring improvement to “the whole of Montgomery.” Should they continue to be “arrested,” “exploited,” and “trampled over” daily, King called them to not “let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love.” King concluded with a word of hope, for although “we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.”²⁶

King continued to mix realism and optimism with his congregation the following Sunday. He admitted that recent historic events, both globally and in the South, might justify some in having a negative assessment of human nature: “Within a generation we have fought two world wars. We have seen man’s tragic inhumanity to man. We have looked to Mississippi and seen supposedly Christian and civilized men brutally murdering the precious life of a little child. We have looked to Alabama and seen a ruthless mob take the precious law of the land and crush it below their tragic whims and caprices.” These realities ought not lead to despair, however, for Jesus’ ministry “revealed a deep faith in the possibilities of human nature.” Based on faith in the human capacity to change, King predicted the boycott would end as “a victory for justice, a victory for fair play and a victory for democracy.”²⁷

The month of February had proven a critical one for King. He faced threats and experienced violence, yet his resolve had not faltered. One of King’s greatest sources of encouragement was the people themselves. February had proven pivotal for them as well. Those who sacrificed most by not riding city buses had overwhelmingly defeated a proposed settlement brought by the Men of Montgomery. The grand jury had indicted a group of eighty-eight people in addition to King, demonstrating that the boycott was about the people of the city and not the leaders alone. At the last mass meeting of the month, held at Holt Street Baptist Church, King began his remarks by describing the mood of the people: “We have new zeal, new stamina to carry on.” While reports at the meeting suggest the arrest did have a negative impact on the car pool, Ralph Abernathy offered some brief remarks: “Thanks must go to 50,000 Montgomery Negroes. This is your movement; we don’t have any leaders in the movement; you are the leaders.” The African American people of Montgomery had displayed their commitment to the movement that month. They had withstood an onslaught of tactics from those intent on defeating the boycott without cowering in fear or reacting with violence.²⁸

With his trial set to begin the next morning, King elected to title his March 18 sermon “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious.” He began the sermon with a description of the recent riots in Tuscaloosa that led University of Alabama officials to force Autherine Lucy, the school’s first African American student, to leave the university. King cited a local newspaper editorial that claimed, “There is a peace on the campus of the University of Alabama.” King blasted the university officials, noting any calm they were experiencing was built on “peace that had been purchased at the price of capitulating to the forces of darkness. This is the type of peace that all men of goodwill hate. This is the type of peace that stinks in the nostrils of the almighty God.” King urged his congregation not to accept peace at any price, as “every true Christian is a fighting pacifist.” Citing Jesus’ words that he did not come to bring peace but a sword, King defined true peace as “not merely the absence of some negative force” but rather as “the presence of some positive force—justice, goodwill, the power of the kingdom of God.”²⁹

King acknowledged the presence of forces pursuing “obnoxious peace” in Montgomery: “I had a long talk the other day with a man about this bus situation. He discussed the peace being destroyed in the community, the destroying of good race relations.” While admitting “if the Negro accepts his place, accepts exploitation, and injustice, there will be peace,” King had no interest in this type of “obnoxious peace.” He passionately proclaimed: “If peace means accepting second class citizenship, I don’t want it. If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it. If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace. If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace.” For the many professionals sitting in the pews of Dexter that morning, King’s words defied their most tested strategy of survival in the segregated South: keeping the peace at any cost. As King prepared to enter court the next morning, he was unwilling to seek an easy out. He proclaimed his willingness to “revolt against this peace” so the true peace of God’s Kingdom might be established on the earth.³⁰

The eyes of the world focused on Montgomery when King’s trial began. Reporters from Europe and Asia joined many American journalists to witness the proceedings. The prosecution sought to prove the significant role that King and other leaders had in both the commencement and the continuation of the bus boycott, thus demonstrating a pattern that would violate the state law. The defense argued there had been a longstanding pattern of discrimination and mistreatment on city buses that finally boiled over into a spontaneous protest, providing a “just cause” for the boycott. The truth rested somewhere in between. While leaders had played a critical role in the early days of the boycott, the people passionately supported the idea. Were it not for the overwhelming support of the people for a one-day boycott on December 5, the leaders would not have proposed continuing the protest, nor would they have formed the MIA. Making such a movement successful did require leadership, however, as transportation systems, negotiating teams, and planned mass meetings helped provide a sense of unity and shared purpose.

King was the final defense witness in the trial. He testified that he had not urged members of the MIA to stay off the buses but had advocated that people “let your conscience be your guide, if you want to ride that is all right.” Under cross-examination, the prosecution used minutes from the first few MIA meetings in an attempt to show King’s definitive direction of the boycott from its inception. Particularly damaging to King’s position was the resolution presented by the MIA that Abernathy read at Holt Street on December 5: “That the citizens of Montgomery are requesting that every citizen in Montgomery, regardless of race, color or creed, to refrain from riding busses owned and operated in the city of Montgomery by the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated until some arrangement has been worked out between said citizens and the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated.” While King did not draft the statement, it did represent the official position of the MIA, and thus accurately reflected his sentiment. The case then depended on whether the judge would find that the MIA had just cause for boycotting the buses. After the four-day trial, Judge Eugene W. Carter found King guilty, sentencing him to either a $500 fine or 386 days of hard labor in Montgomery County. King’s attorneys appealed the ruling, leading Judge Carter to suspend King’s sentence and postpone the remaining eighty-eight boycott cases until the appeal had been heard. Over a year later, the court of appeals denied King’s appeal, as his attorneys had waited too long to officially file the complaint.³¹

Immediately after the verdict, Coretta King joined her husband in a press conference outside the courthouse. Coretta affirmed that she had not wavered from her commitment to her husband and the protest: “All along I have supported my husband in this cause, and whatever happens to him, happens to me.” Again King took the opportunity to advocate nonviolence: “there is no bitterness on my part as a result of the decision and I’m sure that I voice the sentiment of the more than forty thousand Negro citizens of Montgomery. We still have the attitude of love, we still have the method of passive resistance and we are still insisting, emphatically, that violence is self-defeating.” That evening the community gathered for a mass meeting during which King further reflected on his trial. He began his remarks by confessing to committing three sins: “being born a Negro,” “being subjected to the battering rams of segregation and oppression,” and “having the moral courage to stand up and express our weariness of this oppression.” Remarking on the decision of Judge Carter, King noted that perhaps “he did the best he could under the expedient method. As you know, men in political positions allow themselves to succumb to the expedient rather than reaching out for the moral that might be eternally corrective and true.” He also sounded a message of hope in America, which has the capacity “to transform democracy from thin paper to thick action.” King applied biblical imagery to the suffering of the people of Montgomery: “You don’t get to the promised land without going through the wilderness. Though we may not get to see the promised land, we know it’s coming because God is for it. So don’t worry about some of the things we have to go through. They are just a necessary part of the great movement that we are making toward freedom.”³²

The following day, Montgomery Advertiser editor Joe Azbell interviewed King. Azbell asked him if he was afraid, to which King replied: “No I’m not. My attitude is that this is a great cause, it is a great issue that we are confronted with and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important.” Convinced that this was his hour to “stand up and be counted,” he reflected on the perils of fear: “My great prayer is always for God to save me from the paralysis of crippling fear, because I think when a person lives with the fears of the consequences for his personal life he can never do anything in terms of lifting the whole of humanity and solving many of the social problems which we confront in every age and every generation.”³³

Reverend Thomas Thrasher of the ACHR penned an article in early 1956 describing the feeling on the ground in Montgomery. Thrasher, one of the few white pastors willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of many of the MIA’s complaints, highlighted the communication gap between the races: “the patterns of our past communication are breaking, and new patterns are not yet formed. We know them, and yet in our knowing we are aware that we know them not. The nightmare persists even when we hear words and see gestures. They speak. We do not understand.” In assessing the prospects for the future, Thrasher bemoaned many of the unintended outcomes of the boycott: “Our experience in Montgomery, a city known in the past for its good race relations, shows us that change, any change, will be painful for some of us, and that sudden change may operate in reverse and bring about what is not wanted. The Negro is surely regretful to see his bus boycott contribute to the growth of the White Citizens’ Council.” Following King’s trial and conviction, the communication gap continued to widen in Montgomery. The city had elected to get tough with the protesters, and the MIA was not about to back down.³⁴

On April 23, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Fleming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company that segregation on any public transportation was illegal. In response, National City Lines, the parent company of Montgomery City Lines, ordered its drivers to not enforce local segregation laws on their buses any longer. The following day, Police Commissioner Sellers announced his intention to arrest any bus drivers who permitted integrated seating on their buses. When the bus company vowed to stand behind any arrested bus drivers, Montgomery commissioners threatened to revoke National City Lines’ franchise in the city. With the two parties deadlocked in the dispute, King addressed the MIA at a mass meeting, urging the passage of a resolution that would continue the bus boycott until the city chose to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court. Those present supported the resolution unanimously. At the end of his remarks, King offered a word of encouragement: “Eventually, segregation in public transportation will pass away, eventually. And I think we should start preparing now for the inevitable. And let us, when that moment comes, go into the situations that we confront with a great deal of dignity, sanity, and reasonableness.” King continued to pray that Montgomery’s leaders would have “the wisdom to see the vision of goodness in the Cradle of the Confederacy.” For the time being, his prayers remained unanswered. After over two weeks of haggling between the City of Montgomery and National City Lines, on May 9 Judge Walter B. Jones found that local and state segregation laws were constitutional, and therefore directed bus drivers to once again enforce segregation on Montgomery city buses. The bus company chose to abide by the ruling.³⁵

Through his preaching, King attempted to buttress his message of hope with a call to responsible preparation for the challenges and opportunities of the freedom struggle. In a sermon delivered to his Dexter congregation on Mother’s Day, King encouraged mothers to take seriously their “responsibility to prepare for this great moment of history.” He called for mothers to instill within their children “a sense of dignity and self-respect. Start teaching your child early that he is somebody.” Recognizing that a legal victory tearing down segregation would not result in a level playing field, he called for parents to model and expect excellence from their children, conceding that “the Negro must work a little harder than the white man, for he who gets behind must run a little harder or forever remain behind.” King also honored mothers of the past “who didn’t know the difference between ‘you does’ and ‘you don’t,’ but who wanted their offspring to ‘get it all.’” He added that “mothers not only ought to be praised for their greatness, but for keeping on.” The message of simply “keeping on” was apt for the protest movement, as the hot summer months approached with no settlement in sight.³⁶

As the boycott entered its sixth month, King and other MIA officials recognized that the battle in Montgomery was more of a distance race than a sprint. King offered suggestions to the MIA board regarding how to better pace themselves for the long haul. Among his recommendations was a reduction of mass meetings down to one each week and limiting this Monday evening gathering to ninety minutes. He also stressed the need to increase the political voice of African Americans in Montgomery through voting and voter registration. He announced that Jo Ann Robinson would edit a bimonthly newsletter to keep people better informed of MIA developments. Additionally, King advocated a plan to increase their “economic power through the establishment of a bank,” appointing a committee to apply for a charter in the near future.³⁷

The concern for greater economic power had been a part of the agenda of the boycott since its inception. One of the original demands of the boycotters was that Montgomery City Lines hire black drivers to drive on largely African American routes. This condition set by the MIA reflected a felt need among the community for greater economic opportunities. All indications are that the boycott provided a boon to the black economy in Montgomery. Rufus Lewis, who led the transportation efforts for a period, claimed that black businesses were aided: “We buy all our gas from eight Negro filling stations. There is an appeal in mass meetings to trade with Negroes. This whole thing has brought about closer cooperation between Negroes.” In an article, King sounded a similar note: “We have observed that small Negro shops are thriving as Negroes find it inconvenient to walk downtown to the white stores,” concluding, “we have a new respect for the proper use of our dollar.” As summer approached, an end to the bus boycott was nowhere in sight, but the protest had brought an unexpected economic boost to Montgomery’s black citizens.³⁸

Although the economic effects warrant attention, many argued the greatest significance of the boycott was how it united the African American community in Montgomery. Later accounts typically describe this as a time when a previously divided people came together for a common cause. While the car pools provided a degree of independence from the white economy, the car rides also served as a powerful time for boycott participants to share stories and build community. Many drivers saw their task as far more than transporting people from one place to another. They attempted to lighten the mood, some with jokes and stories about whites that gave some respite from the daily grind. Drivers frequently reminded passengers of the power of God, turning their seat into a pulpit for the duration of the trip. They saw their time in the car pool as crucial to keeping the people united, encouraged, and confident. Jo Ann Robinson noted that by the time folks reached their destination, “they were laughing as if that mood of faith had been with them all day.” As many of the drivers represented Montgomery’s professionals, and many of the riders were from the working class, the car pools served to provide greater unity among the classes. Robinson even believed “the line between the higher class and the proletariat has broken down—‘We are in this thing together’ is the spirit on both levels.”³⁹

The regular mass meetings also provided an opportunity for the community to come together, leading many to view these gatherings as the heartbeat of the movement. The services also allowed boycott leaders, including many of the city’s preachers, to play a more public role in the movement. They became a place where the professional classes could join maids and day laborers in a common cause. One veteran pastor who had already earned the respect of many in the city prior to the boycott was Reverend Solomon Seay. King later called him “one of the few clerical voices that, in the years preceding the protest, had lashed out against the injustices heaped on the Negro, and urged his people to a greater appreciation of their own worth.” King noted his speeches “raised the spirits of all who heard him.” Seay himself viewed the movement as primarily spiritual, with Christianity providing “a common ground upon which everyone could stand.” In Seay’s mind, the unifying effect of the boycott was best understood “as the work and purpose of God being fulfilled at the historical moment in American history.”⁴⁰

Mass meetings would become one of the defining forms of the civil rights movement. Boycott participant Alfreida Dean Thomas credited the gatherings for helping her feel “for the first time that here were people who had been separated just on really fictitious reasons but were now together in oneness of purpose. This alone was enough to make a good feeling.” King claimed the attendance at mass meetings included both professionals and the working class: “The vast majority present were working people; yet there was always an appreciable number of professionals in the audience.” He went on to claim that “the so-called ‘big Negroes’ who owned cars and had never ridden the buses came to know the maids and laborers who rode the buses every day. Men and women who had been separated from each other by false standards of class were now singing and praying together in a common struggle for freedom and human dignity.”⁴¹

For many observers of the Montgomery movement, one of the most significant developments among the city’s African American community was their willingness to take action. While hosting a workshop at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee with Rosa Parks, Robert Graetz, and Alabama State College professor J. E. Pierce, school director Myles Horton noted that during 1955 he had received letters from Nixon and Aubrey Williams saying “that the Negroes in Montgomery didn’t do anything.”⁴² The belief that the people of Montgomery were not capable of participating in such a movement was shared by many in the city, particularly whites. Pierce affirmed the analysis that Montgomery’s African Americans were complacent prior to the protest. These assessments, while perhaps empirically descriptive in the minds of both local activists and onlookers, are overly simplistic. For many, simply surviving another day in the racially repressive South was anything but complacent. Assigning complacency to those whose life situations were barely known speaks to the paternalism of many who longed for social change. Some leaders also distrusted the people’s ability to rise together to demand that transformation take place. The boycott helped them overcome any misgivings about the capacity of the masses for constructive action.⁴³

The mass meetings provided some window into who was fully supporting the effort, although who actually attended these gatherings is disputed. Montgomery Advertiser editor Joe Azbell, noting the quality of clothing worn to mass meetings, claimed they provided a gathering space for car owners and the wealthy rather than “the maids and the janitors and the cooks and the people that are dependent on the bus service.” Based on his superficial appraisal, Azbell concluded that “the preachers and the business men and the doctors and the lawyers” were providing leadership and “are the ones who are pushing this thing.” He believed the people wanted to return to the buses, “but their leaders won’t let them.” Azbell’s assessments demonstrate the significant cultural gap between blacks and whites in segregated Montgomery. Azbell did not know many of the people who gathered at mass meetings, and was unaware of the importance for many African Americans of wearing nice and respectable clothing when one entered a church sanctuary. The fact that those who attended mass meetings wore nice clothing did not indicate their social standing or how much money they had. He also underestimated the agency and self-determination of the working people who provided the backbone of this movement.⁴⁴

One wonders if the majority of the professional class was ever fully on board with the movement. These more well-to-do citizens did not rely on city buses, so if they stayed out of the limelight they would be able to avoid any negative repercussions from whites in the city. Evidence suggests a lack of concern by some in the professional class that continued throughout the boycott. Mrs. O. B. Underwood, who was a family friend of the Kings, believed laborers were much more supportive of the boycott than many black professionals in the city: “I doubt that many of the middle class blacks felt that Rev. King was doing anything for them because, as you well learned by the time, the middle class blacks didn’t help the Montgomery boycotting situation; they did nothing. I don’t know any middle class blacks who were involved. There were maybe a handful of people in different situations, but they all had their cars.” Reflecting on the boycott years later, Underwood noted that many teachers who were trying to hang onto their jobs were frightened during the boycott. Most professionals who went to mass meetings “were hiding or standing behind bushes or something, wanting to hear, but afraid to be seen.” She claims some whites began photographing people coming and going from the meetings in order to exact some type of revenge on those supporting the protest. The result, according to Underwood, was that the visible support of the movement came from the working classes, who had less economic vulnerability to white reprisals.⁴⁵

Mrs. Althea Thompson Thomas, who served as an organist at Dexter, was not supportive of the boycott. She believed churches had become too involved: “The ministers have no business in this and turning the church into a political organization.” Believing that “some of these ministers don’t know what they are doing,” she suggested having the city’s black and white “intelligentsia” get together at Alabama State College to settle on some sort of agreement. Thomas did not hide her antagonistic spirit: “I think for myself, and if I want to ride a bus, I ride. That’s why I don’t go to any of the meetings, because I’ll speak my mind.” She even suggested that the MIA offered no room for contrary opinions or dissent: “One of my friends told me that if I went to a meeting and told them how I felt, that they would throw me out. So I take no part in it.” Clearly not every African American in Montgomery rallied behind the MIA. The city was not as unified as many participants projected or leaders later remembered.⁴⁶

Although Montgomery’s African American community was not of one mind regarding the boycott, they could all celebrate the ruling of the federal courts in Browder v. Gayle. In a 2–1 ruling, the federal district court found that “the statutes and ordinances requiring segregation of the white and colored races on the motor buses of a common carrier of passengers in the City of Montgomery and its police jurisdiction violate the due process and equal protection of the law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” Buoyed by the victory, the Kings and Abernathys headed to California for some vacation and to raise funds for the MIA. Ruptures within the MIA would force them to return early from their trip.⁴⁷

Meanwhile, Nixon continued to lobby for greater economic independence and development for African Americans in order to make lasting changes. His plans for the future included greater unionization and a higher degree of economic sophistication. He tried to keep the pressure on King to use some of the funds pouring in from around the nation to further develop the community. He looked at the history of the Montgomery bricklayers’ local union as an example of black economic initiative, as African Americans got the local charter for the city and hence whites had to apply to blacks for membership into an integrated union.⁴⁸

Nixon had a very significant impact within the MIA and on its leaders. Although his job as a Pullman porter took him away from Montgomery regularly, he consulted with King when he was home: “I never came to town a single trip that the Reverend King and I didn’t spend some time together. Strategy meetings and so forth, and then some nights at twelve o’clock at night he was either at my house or I was at his.” Nixon had an even greater influence on the tactics and convictions of Pastor Uriah J. Fields. The original recording secretary of the MIA, Fields had written a controversial letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser in January, suggesting the true goal of the boycott was an end to segregation on city buses, an objective Nixon had sought from the beginning. Reverend H. J. Palmer, an MIA leader who would later serve as the organization’s secretary, claimed Fields’s letter had served as a turning point in the city, leading several whites who had been making significant contributions to the effort to withdraw their support. Many whites had been trying to address the stated goals of the MIA, only to discover that part of the leadership really wanted to end bus segregation in Montgomery.⁴⁹

After being reprimanded by the executive committee, Fields had not been faithful in attending MIA meetings, leading a nominating committee to replace him as the organization’s recording secretary. At the next mass meeting, Fields angrily denounced his demotion from his leadership position. He then went to the media, claiming the MIA had mismanaged the considerable donations they had received from well-wishers and supporters throughout the country. The local media seized on Fields’s charges, while opponents capitalized on the allegations as a way to discredit the boycott. King and Abernathy, who were vacationing and raising funds in California when the story broke, rushed back to Montgomery to respond to the crisis.⁵⁰

At the next scheduled MIA meeting, King introduced Fields, who issued a retraction and an apology to those gathered. Fully engaged in damage control, the next MIA newsletter attempted to marginalize the validity of Fields’s allegation while highlighting his retraction. Titled “A Regrettable Incident,” the story emphasized that the change in the recording secretary position coincided with the incorporation of the organization and that all previous positions on the executive board had been temporary. The article noted how busy Fields had been, which led to frequent absences from MIA board meetings, resulting in his inability “to render the type of service that the organization needed. He had not been present several weeks before his replacement.” The article called Fields’s charges of financial mismanagement “preposterous” and thus “unworthy of refutation.” In conclusion, the writer claimed: “In a state of human passion and human frailty, he spoke falsely against an organization which he loves. The wrong has been righted, but the blur remains. The minister’s mistake has been costly to himself and to the good name of the MIA, but 50,000 of his fellow comrades will neither desert nor forsake him.”⁵¹

Other evidence suggests the matter was far more complicated. Robert Graetz later claimed that Fields’s charges of financial mismanagement “reignited my own concerns about the way money was handled.” As the movement grew in prominence, leaders had opportunities to participate in MIA fund-raisers around the country. Graetz helped raise thousands of dollars on such events, and had always given all the proceeds, minus travel expenses, to the MIA. He later remembered a conversation with someone from the MIA office after one such trip in which he was asked “Did you keep enough out for yourself?” When Graetz responded that he had raised all the money for the organization, he was told, “I know, but the other speakers normally keep an honorarium for themselves out of the money they raised.” Although he was initially shocked, he later felt those keeping part of the money for themselves may have needed it, as some were not well compensated by their congregations. Graetz’s recollections reveal a lack of clear economic policy guiding the MIA’s fund-raising activities. Nixon also gave some credence to Fields’s charge:

A lot of times a minister would go and make a speech and he’d think that he’s entitled to some of it. Everybody didn’t do like I done. Why I’ve known Reverend King to, you know? Reverend King, he spoke up in Canada and he told me, “Brother Nick, when the check come from Canada, that’s my personal check.” Sure ‘nough, when it came I gave it to ‘im. No weren’t no question about it. A lot of that happened. But Mrs. Parks never accepted anything. Whatever she collected she turned right in. She’d come in three or four o’clock in the evening and turn in anything she’d collected and I’d give her a receipt for it. Everybody didn’t do that.

With any growing organization emerging quickly in response to a specific challenge, infrastructure often lags. A lack of clear organization policies and guidelines did allow for MIA monies to be claimed by individuals within the movement, including King. Without clear guidelines or accounting, it is also possible that greed prevailed on more than one occasion, as leaders helped themselves to more of the funds than was warranted. Fields’s allegations of financial mismanagement were thus not without merit.⁵²

Fields experienced significant backlash for going to the white press with his claims. Johnnie Carr, who attended Hall Street Baptist Church, where Fields had served prior to Bell Street, later remembered the young minister’s greed as one of the things that led him to be dismissed from the church. According to Carr, Fields publicly denigrated Hall Street Baptist’s treatment of him. Far more egregious in Carr’s eyes was Fields’s betrayal of the organization in response to a personal offense: “I think very little of anybody who was part of the inside who would go out and try and destroy.” B. J. Simms, who headed the transportation committee for the MIA, believed Fields wanted to lead the boycott, and when that did not happen he allowed jealousy to cloud his judgment. Simms asserted, “Fields decided if he couldn’t run it, he’d ruin it.” This torrent of criticism led Fields to later claim that he “found there’s no pressure like pressure from the inside group.” Nixon wondered if some of the trouble was not attributable to Fields’s willingness to challenge some of King’s decisions. In the end, this perceived insubordination led to his dismissal from the executive board, and after his public allegations, “some of King’s supporters run that man off.”⁵³

The MIA used the funds that came into their coffers to keep the car pools going, to pay for legal expenses, and to maintain communication through efforts like the MIA newsletter. According to Erna Dungee Allen, some of the organization’s finances also went toward helping people with financial needs in the community. The organization assisted residents with rent, paid energy bills, provided food for those who needed it, and even purchased a few washing machines for families. She believed the MIA engaged in these types of assistance to try “to get along with the people. And usually the folks who weren’t participating, who didn’t belong to a church or anything, were the ones who came for help. They were usually the poorest ones.” Allen remembered King as particularly concerned with the plight of Montgomery’s poorest. While he didn’t support all the charitable assistance, “he felt like he had to go along with most of it.”⁵⁴

Throughout the summer, some whites continued to resort to desperate strategies in an attempt to discourage, intimidate, and hamper those participating in the boycott. As ripples of civil rights struggles spread from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham to Montgomery, it was easier for whites in the state to blame outsiders for the challenges rather than attribute the protest to indigenous dissatisfaction with the racial status quo. As a result, the state outlawed the NAACP in Alabama, citing the organization’s refusal to turn over their membership list to the government. In late August, the home of Lutheran pastor Robert Graetz was bombed and nearly destroyed. Soon after word came that insurance providers were unwilling to cover seventeen church-owned station wagons that provided the backbone of the MIA’s citywide car pool system. After a brief period of concern, Lloyds of London agreed to pick up coverage on the vehicles.⁵⁵

Despite the white backlash, one of the overriding concerns of the MIA was how to win whites to the cause of justice rather than merely defeat them. At an executive board meeting in September, King urged those present to reach out across racial lines by making “our motives clearly understood by whites of our community” and beginning to “move from protest to reconciliation.” The board adopted several strategies to assist in building more bridges with the white community. They elected to get some people associated with the MIA to write essays on the true spirit of the movement that could be carried by local newspapers. Additionally, they hoped to mail these articles to “influential and representative whites in this city, both those favorably disposed to our movement and those who oppose it” including white clergy, the Men of Montgomery, and women’s organizations. Finally, they sought to work with radio and television stations to try to get the local media to cover both sides of the boycott story. If local approaches failed, King was to seek an appearance on Meet the Press. The primary strategy adopted by the MIA for addressing whites in the community was to use the media. While they had little success in Montgomery, this meeting was a harbinger of a strategy that proved pivotal as the civil rights movement expanded, with national media bringing the story of the movement to whites throughout the nation.⁵⁶

As weariness set in among the protesters, King once again attempted to provide words of encouragement, inspiration, and hope to his Dexter congregation. He reminded them of Jesus’ invitation from Matthew 18:21–22: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” God’s rest was available to them, for “although we live amid the tensions of life, although we live amid injustice” these conditions will not last forever: “I’m glad the slaves were the greatest psychologists that America’s ever known, for they learned something that we must always learn. And they said it in their broken language, ‘I’m so glad trouble don’t last always.’” King bemoaned the current conditions in the Southland, where white supremacy dominated state and local decision making as men in power dedicated themselves “to keep the Negro segregated and exploited and keep him down under the iron yoke of oppression.” King held on to hope, however, as he cried out to his congregation:

And there is something that cries to us and says that Kasper and Englehardt and all the other men that we hear talking, grim men that represent the death groans of a dying system. And all that they are saying are merely the last-minute breathing spots of a system that will inevitably die. For justice rules this world, love and goodwill, and it will triumph. They begin to wonder all over the nation, how is it we can keep walking in Montgomery. How is it that we can keep burning out our rubber? How is it we can keep living under the tension? And we can cry out to the nation, “We can do it because we know that as we walk, God walks with us.”

After months of protest and struggle, King had learned that God’s presence with the people represented the only foundation for their efforts to hold on and continue their fight.⁵⁷

King also continued to preach about the importance of love for those committed to the struggle. Warning against the self-righteousness embodied by the older brother in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, King observed that “the tragedy of the elder brother was that he was contaminated with the sin of pride and egotism,” noting “his spiritual pride had drained from him the capacity to love. He could not call his brother brother.” King encouraged his Dexter congregation to not only strive for personal piety, but to also embody genuine love for others. Bemoaning the fact that the church and culture have tended to elevate some sins while ignoring others, he charged: “The Church has been harder on profanity than on prejudice. It has denounced drunkenness more than stinginess. It was unchristian to gamble, but not to own slaves.”⁵⁸ Meanwhile a few white Christians in Montgomery continued to display an unwillingness to love, as the MIA car pool once again came under attack.⁵⁹

At the suggestion of Jack D. Brock, the president of Montgomery’s printers’ union, the city elected to take legal action against the car pool by claiming it was an unauthorized business. Mayor Gayle instructed Montgomery’s city attorneys “to file such proceedings as it may deem proper to stop the operation of car pool or transportation systems growing out of the bus boycott.” The case went to trial on November 13, with the city not only seeking to end the car pool, but also to gain the lost tax revenues Montgomery would have garnered through bus travel. The MIA faced the possibility of the car pool ending with no alternate plan under development. As King sat at the defendant’s table during a brief midday recess, he noticed activity at the back of the courtroom. Word soon came to him that the U.S. Supreme Court had sided with the U.S. District Court, finding segregation on Montgomery’s buses unconstitutional. In what proved to be an anticlimactic ruling, Judge Carter supported the city’s claim in their lawsuit, effectively ending the car pool. The Supreme Court’s ruling did not take effect immediately. Over the following six weeks, as the city exhausted every delay tactic they could find, the boycott continued. MIA leaders scrambled to develop share-a-ride programs in local neighborhoods, although without a centralized transportation system, many elected to walk rather than return to segregated buses.⁶⁰

On the day the Supreme Court ruling reached Montgomery, the 134th Alabama Baptist State Convention was in session in the city. The proceedings included a report from the Christian Life Commission titled The Race Situation in Alabama. The Southern Baptists dismissed the legitimacy of Autherine Lucy’s protest at the University of Alabama, calling her a puppet of the NAACP. They proceeded to address the boycott in Montgomery, surmising that “emotionalism has affected, we feel, some decisions of the legislators and certain magistrates.” They also defended those who had elected to join the White Citizens Council: “Because of a lack of alternate course many white Christians, normally moderate, are finding themselves more closely linked with the stands not of their own persuasion.” As a way to proceed, the report recommended meetings between “more independent Negro ministers” and nearby white ministers with the goal of lessening the tension of the situation, noting those involved should be members of neither the NAACP nor the White Citizens Council. While the Southern Baptists continued to identify the problem as tension between the races, King and the MIA described how to live faithfully with the inevitable tensions emerging from a struggle for justice.⁶¹

On December 20, the Supreme Court’s ruling reached Montgomery, instructing the city to operate integrated buses the following morning. At a mass meeting that evening, King concluded with words of faith and expectation: “It is my firm conviction that God is working in Montgomery. Let all men of goodwill, both Negro and white, continue to work with Him. With this dedication we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.” King woke early to board one of the first fully integrated buses. He did so as a changed man. Over the course of the previous twelve months, the trajectory of King’s life and ministry was radically reshaped. Within the crucible of a community in struggle, King found his voice. No longer was King primarily a theoretical advocate of the social gospel. Now King was in the heart of the battle to make social justice a reality. Before coming to Montgomery, King had immersed himself in a life of social gospel oratory, rooted in the power of love. He had had ideas about God’s character and about social change, but he had never fully experienced the shared and prolonged struggles that transform theories into convictions and forge authentic, unwavering faith. But by the end of 1956, King was no stranger to living under the tensions of modern life, and as he stared evil in the face daily, he became a preacher of passionate conviction that could stir not only a congregation or even a community, but a nation.⁶²

In his memoir of the boycott, King claimed that “The Montgomery story would have taken place if the leaders of the protest had never been born.” In many respects, this is true. The boycott idea preceded King’s arrival in the city, and the first few days of the protest would have occurred had King not been on the scene at all. The stalemate with the city would likely have happened as well, for Montgomery city officials proved determined to maintain white supremacy in the city by defending segregated buses, and were unwilling to compromise. The MIA had many resolute leaders who were committed to staying the course. Even the emphasis on love and nonviolence would have emerged as a dominant theme without King’s presence. The commitments to loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek were deeply rooted in the African American Christian tradition. The fact that the people embodied the nonviolence King articulated demonstrates their predisposition to view nonviolence as a viable strategy.⁶³

What then did King contribute to the Montgomery bus boycott? Perhaps most importantly, as he would say the following year, he became a symbol for the movement. He was better educated and more articulate than any of the other black pastors in the city. His winsome personality allowed him to remain above the fray. When conflicts emerged within the movement, King played the role of arbitrator and peace maker, as he did when he met with Uriah Fields following allegations of MIA financial mismanagement. He also had the capacity to connect with professionals and the poor, the highly educated and the illiterate. King became a unifying figure whose capacity for personal growth coupled with his significant social skills made him an ideal person to serve as the face of the local movement. His sense of the moment and calm demeanor under pressure as demonstrated in his Holt Street address and through his reassuring words following the bombing of his home solidified his unique role. J. Pius Barbour, King’s friend and mentor from Crozer, wrote during the boycott: “Every now and then God takes a human personality and makes that personality the Symbol of some great social movement. King has become the Symbol of the New Negro in the Negroes struggle. He is the first voice of the new negro. The new negro has had no spokesman. King is the first.” While the protest would have begun without King, and the Supreme Court would have found in their favor regardless, the local people may well have fractured without his presence. More conservative leadership might have prevailed at critical moments, leading to compromise and an end to the boycott. King’s decision not to compromise coupled with his hope-filled rhetoric held the people of Montgomery together for nearly thirteen months.⁶⁴

There can be no doubt regarding the deep impact the boycott had on King. Jo Ann Robinson and E. D. Nixon had mobilized the community with the idea of a boycott and had invited King to play a critical role. Seizing upon the arrest of Parks, they created a context within which King could blossom. King gleaned from the sacrifices of maids and laborers who bore the brunt of the hardship by giving up buses for over a year. He also gained valuable experience as the president of the MIA, where he had to marshal resources, navigate through controversies and rivalries, and respond to crises with strategic thinking and skillful decision making. In addition, he learned the potentially pivotal role the media could play in swaying the opinions of the nation, as numerous media sources covered his trial and the eventual integration of the city’s buses. King experienced the goodwill and assistance of some local whites, providing him evidence that change, redemption, and transformation of hearts was possible. He was emboldened by the intransigence of the city commissioners and their varied attempts to intimidate and dissuade both him and the MIA. Montgomery provided a unique challenge that he would have had a hard time finding elsewhere. No other local movement developed with the longevity and significance of Montgomery until the next decade. It also took a unique situation for a relative newcomer to the city to have the opportunity to be the leader of any organization, let alone a major civil rights protest. From the long view, King may have gained even more from the boycott than the community did.⁶⁵

As the year came to an end, King began planning for the future of the MIA. In December 1956, Liberation magazine dedicated its issue to the boycott. In an article titled “We Are Still Walking,” King noted future plans for the organization following the November 13 Supreme Court ruling. He also reflected on the past thirteen months of his life in a conversation with New York attorney Stanley Levison: “if anybody had asked me a year ago to head this movement, I tell you very honestly, that I would have run a mile to get away from it. I had no intention of being involved in this way.” Once the movement began and King realized the inspiration he provided for those sacrificing for the cause, he “realized that the choice leaves your own hands. The people expect you to give them leadership. You see them growing as they move into action, and then you know you no longer have a choice, you can’t decide whether to stay in it or get out of it, you must stay in it.” For the remaining days of his life, King stayed in the fight for civil rights, but the setting was rarely Montgomery.⁶⁶