6

“Bigger Than Montgomery”

They had the vision to see this struggle is bigger than Montgomery. And they have been willing to share me with this nation and with the world.

—Martin Luther King Jr., December 5, 1957

In February 1957, King appeared on the cover of Time magazine in a story chronicling the successful conclusion of the Montgomery bus boycott. This honor reflected an unintended outcome of the local protest: King became the face for the national struggle for civil rights. He was now one of the most sought-after African American preachers in the nation, having delivered keynote addresses at the annual gatherings of both the NAACP and the National Baptist Convention the previous summer. Speaking opportunities flooded his desk. He accepted an invitation from Kwame Nkrumah to attend Ghana’s independence celebration and was in serious discussions to write his memoirs of the boycott. Although his civil rights leadership was born in Montgomery, by early 1957 King had already become bigger than Montgomery.

As King’s prominence grew, the local struggle intensified. Once the buses were integrated, a wave of violence swept Montgomery, offering a foretaste of the depths to which some would sink to preserve white supremacy and segregation. By the time the boycott ended, the African American people of Montgomery had secured a major local and national victory. They had stood together to strike a blow against Jim Crow and segregation in their city. In response, a small number of reactionaries unleashed a wave of violence. During the first ten days of bus integration, five white men assaulted a black woman at a bus stop while snipers fired shots at King’s parsonage and several city buses. Within a week, the city suspended evening bus service in an attempt to curtail the violence. A few weeks later, bombs struck two homes and four churches, demonstrating that integrated buses did not ensure safety and justice for all Montgomery’s citizens.

King’s notoriety and leadership grew immeasurably during the boycott. The benefits of the protest did not extend to the daily lives of most of Montgomery’s African Americans, however. Many boycott leaders would face difficult and challenging days. The fragile unity that had held during the boycott soon crumbled. By the end of the decade, several of those who had been part of the vanguard of black leadership in Montgomery prior to King’s arrival had either left the city or seen their influence stifled by the clergy-directed MIA. Working-class blacks faced significant backlash as well. Many faced increased verbal abuse and frightening threats. Some lost their jobs when whites exacted an economic price on African Americans who had supported the movement. A few became victims of violent acts resulting in the destruction and loss of property, personal injury, and even the loss of life. The boycott had provided an economic boost to the local African American economy, but leaders failed to foster any sustained economic development effort. King shifted his attention to a struggle bigger than Montgomery as the local community labored to sustain the momentum generated by the boycott. The U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting integrated buses in the city proved more of a victory for King and the burgeoning national civil rights movement than it was for Montgomery’s African American community.

King’s attention turned to broader regional challenges during the first week of January 1957. Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on the momentum of Montgomery, King heeded the advice of Bayard Rustin by calling together several southern black pastors. They agreed to meet at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to contemplate a collaborative effort to bring racial change and integration throughout the South. The night before the meeting, a series of bombings rocked Montgomery, reminding King and all who gathered that some would stop at nothing to preserve segregation. King and Abernathy rushed back to Montgomery to inspect the damaged buildings and to reassure the people. Bombs struck several homes, including the parsonages of both Abernathy and Robert Graetz. Among the four church buildings that absorbed significant damage was Abernathy’s First Baptist Church. Two of the other church buildings had to be completely rebuilt.¹

After inspecting the damage, King and Abernathy returned to Atlanta to resume discussions with a group of southern pastors who would form the core of what would later be called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Like any new organization, the SCLC needed money to launch its ambitious program. As the newest face of the civil rights struggle, King became their most effective fund-raiser, as he traveled around the nation sharing the Montgomery story. In spite of these responsibilities, King intended to more fully engage his pastorate at Dexter once the boycott ended. He also remained president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which sought to develop a road map that would lead to additional gains in their city. The bombings reminded King that the local struggle he had been fighting for the last thirteen months was far from over. Given the intransigence of white supremacy, moving forward in Montgomery would prove a difficult challenge.

The wave of violence alarmed Montgomery’s white citizens. A group that included Montgomery Advertiser editor Grover Hall, several white pastors, and the Men of Montgomery issued a statement condemning the bombings. City police responded to the outcry by arresting seven Ku Klux Klan members, several of whom later confessed to the crimes. One of the men even showed police the stock of explosives they had used, but an all-white jury later acquitted them of all charges. Despite indignant rhetoric in the wake of the violence, white Montgomery lacked the collective will to bring the perpetrators to justice.²

Once the bus boycott became a national story, Montgomery became a flashpoint for white backlash. The White Citizens Council grew exponentially, bombings of churches and parsonages became far too common, and economic reprisals were the order of the day. Following the Supreme Court ruling and the official integration of city buses in Montgomery, the backlash only intensified. Many local whites were determined that the victory garnered through the bus boycott would not be replicated. Developing a sustained local movement following the boycott would be that much more difficult because the white community would not again be guilty of underestimating the capacity of Montgomery’s African American citizens to galvanize for a cause. Their primary weapon was to terrorize blacks through consistent acts of violence.

In his Sunday sermon following the bombings, King struggled to make sense of the violence: “Where is God while hundreds and thousands of his children suffer merely because they are desirous of having freedom and human dignity? Where is God while churches and homes of ministers are being plunged across the abyss of torturous barbarity?” The following evening at a MIA mass meeting, King further chronicled the tragic details of their shared struggle: “Several of our people have been needlessly beaten, one of our humble ladies—an expectant mother, has been viciously shot, and to climax it all two of our homes and four of our churches have been bombed.” While admitting ignorance regarding God’s ultimate purpose, he suggested that “it may be we are called upon to be God’s suffering servants through whom he is working his redemptive plan.” He encouraged those gathered to not become bitter nor turn to violence but to “continue to love” and to “keep standing up.” As King was delivering the closing prayer at the gathering, he recalled being “gripped by an emotion I could not control.” Despite being overcome, he prayed: “Lord, I hope no one will have to die as a result of our struggle for freedom here in Montgomery. Certainly I don’t want to die. But if anyone has to die, let it be me.” This open display of emotion brought King some cathartic relief while also prompting many to reach out and reassure him of their support for his leadership even as the community faced uncertain days. Many had hoped the tension would ease once integration orders came from the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, King and the community struggled to come to terms with the intransigent nature of racism.³

Following the bombings, the city briefly suspended bus service. When officials reinstated public transportation, a wave of violence once again fell upon Montgomery. Bombs struck a service station, a cab stand, and the home of an African American hospital worker. Someone also placed twelve sticks of dynamite under King’s front porch, although the makeshift bomb was discovered before it exploded. The day this new round of bombings hit, King admitted before his congregation that “I went to bed many nights scared to death” over the previous year, but he had been sustained by a vision in which God told him to “Preach the Gospel, stand up for truth, stand up for righteousness.” With divinely inspired boldness, King proclaimed: “So I’m not afraid of anybody this morning. Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I’m going to stand up to them; tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I’m going to stand up to them. If I had to die tomorrow morning I would die happy, because I’ve been to the mountain top and I’ve seen the promised land and it’s going to be here in Montgomery.” Days after being overwhelmed by emotion, King emerged with his usual message of hope and faith. He optimistically spoke of a day when his city would experience a Promised Land, but many of Montgomery’s black citizens were destined to wander in the wilderness for many more years.⁴

Clear direction for the Montgomery movement proved elusive. In early February, King appeared as a guest on a national NBC Sunday news program called The Open Mind. When asked by the moderator about future plans for the MIA, King admitted: “In Montgomery we have not worked out any next steps, that is, in any chronological order. We are certainly committed to work and press on until segregation is nonexistent in Montgomery and all over the South.” While plans were hazy on the local scene, King continued to take full advantage of opportunities to travel, speak, and promote the cause of justice both domestically and abroad. An appearance on the cover of Time magazine cemented King’s role as the face of not only the MIA, but also the broader civil rights struggle. Among King’s many opportunities was a request from Gold Coast prime minister Kwame Nkrumah to attend Ghana’s independence celebration. Seeking to solidify his understanding of the relationship between national and international freedom movements, King accepted the invitation. Only twenty-eight years old, King had already earned the status of foreign dignitary. A few days before departing, King preached “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” at Dexter. King told his congregation that the groundswell of freedom movements around the globe demonstrated God’s power at work, leading him to be optimistic that the local struggle for social change would prove successful.⁵

Before leaving, King hoped to set in motion a process that would provide the MIA with a blueprint for how they would take full advantage of what King called “a great time to be alive.” In a memo to Ralph Abernathy, King urged his deputy to call together a “Future Planning Committee” to chart a course for the future of the MIA. The committee included Abernathy as chair, Jo Ann Robinson and Dr. Moses W. Jones as co-chairs, as well as J. E. Pierce, Solomon Seay, H. H. Hubbard, R. J. Glasco, Rufus Lewis, E. D. Nixon, Mrs. A. W. West, and Robert Graetz. At the first meeting, the committee discussed implementing an eight-point program for the organization. Proposed initiatives included nonpartisan political education and involvement, an emphasis on interracial communication, providing means for adult education, and improving recreation opportunities for African Americans in the city. They also sought to improve the economic status of Montgomery’s black citizens through securing more good jobs, providing better housing, promoting neighborhood businesses, establishing credit unions and perhaps a Savings and Loan, and continuing financial relief efforts. Finally, the committee hoped to pursue better cooperation with the police while recognizing the need for an “impartial investigation of alleged intimidations and discriminations” by law enforcement.⁶

Soon after King’s return from Ghana, the committee settled on a plan for the future of the MIA. They began their written blueprint for the organization with an idealistic preamble:

Recognizing that every community has the basic potential for the solution of social problems and the implementation of legal decisions which redefine the ideals set forth by the founders of this nation, and that ultimately the local community is the proving ground for the social progress of the nation; and recognizing that the only feasible solution to the problems of group relations and race relations is through the Christian and non-violent approach; and recognizing that enforced segregation is a social evil which must be eradicated before any group or people can reach their full social, political, economic, and moral maturity; and desiring to provide a far-reaching MIA program that would embrace both the immediate and the remote problems, and at the same time center its aims upon the building of a bigger, a better, and a more beautiful community, wherein good group relations and good race relations exist; we therefore set forth the following ten-point program.

Despite consistent backlash from segregationists, the MIA dared to dream big as they prepared for the future. They believed Montgomery would continue to be a primary proving ground for the burgeoning civil rights movement. Over the coming years, all Montgomery would prove was that the nation had a long way to go.⁷

King used his first sermon at Dexter following his return from Ghana to reflect on his trip, emphasizing the tragic stories of colonialism and slavery that deeply affected the continent of Africa and her people. Citing the groundswell of independence movements throughout the world, he asserted that “there is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” When King heard the chants of freedom emanating from the people at the hour of Ghana’s independence, he remembered “that old Negro spiritual once more crying out: ‘Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at last.’” Although Ghana had experienced their liberation, the local struggle continued for Dexter’s parishioners: “Don’t go back to your homes and around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission and that all the forces in the South will eventually work out this thing for the Negroes.” The lesson of Ghana was that “freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil. The bus boycott is just the beginning. Buses are integrated in Montgomery, but that is just the beginning.” Emphasizing the theme of nonviolence, he instructed his congregation to “fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery, that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters. Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr. Engelhardt, not to defeat Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil that’s in them. But our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt.” King embraced the MIA’s belief that Montgomery could become a proving ground for the development of genuine cross-racial relationships.⁸

On Easter Sunday, King shared some of his heartfelt questions regarding the persistence and power of evil in the world. As he contemplated the implications of Christ’s resurrection, he confessed his doubts: “Every now and then I become bewildered about this thing. I begin to despair every now and then. And wonder why it is that the forces of evil seem to reign supreme and the forces of goodness seem to be trampled over.” He admitted struggling to understand why “the forces of injustice have triumphed over the Negro, and he has been forced to live under oppression and slavery and exploitation? Why is it, God? Why is it simply because some of your children ask to be treated as first-class human beings they are trampled over, have their homes bombed, their children are pushed from their classrooms and sometimes little children are thrown into the deep waters of Mississippi?” King’s specific questions for God reveal his commitment to wrestle along with the people through the most perplexing challenges of life in the segregated South. While happy the boycott was successful, they experienced in its wake the full onslaught of racist resistance to social change. In the face of such hatred, King’s faith remained steadfast as Easter “answers the profound question that we confront in Montgomery. And if we can just stand with it, if we can just live with Good Friday, things will be all right. For I know that Easter is coming and I can see it coming now. As I look over the world, as I look at America. I can see Easter coming, in race relations. I can see it coming on every hand. I see it coming in Montgomery.”⁹

King’s frequent travels meant he had fewer opportunities to see Easter coming in Montgomery. When Pulpit Digest requested that King provide a sermon on race relations for publication, King declined, citing “an extremely crowded and strenuous schedule for the last two or three years, I have not had the opportunity to write most of the sermons that I preach. In most cases I have had to content myself with a rather detailed outline.” His energies were increasingly directed toward achieving national objectives. In May, King joined A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP in calling for a march on Washington, D.C., dubbed the “Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.” Set for the third anniversary of the Brown decision, the organizers stressed that “eight states have defied the nation’s highest court and have refused to begin in good will, with all deliberate speed, to comply with its ruling.” In their attempt to garner participants for the march, the sponsors noted the passivity of law enforcement while “ministers have been arrested, threatened and shot,” “churches and homes have been bombed,” and “school children have been threatened with mobs.” William Holmes Borders, the pastor of Atlanta’s Wheat Street Baptist Church, attended the organizational meeting for the march and responded with a brief note to King. Concerned that there was no concrete plan for action beyond the event, Borders suggested an agenda that included integrating buses in several southern cities, registering more voters, testing integration at southern restaurants, and “continuous intelligent agitation for implementation of the Supreme Court Decision.” While Borders lobbied for a more clearly defined agenda for the Washington, D.C., event, his civil rights agenda reflected the typical concerns of activist professionals who were only marginally concerned with economic issues, but instead focused on integration and the right to vote.¹⁰

Bayard Rustin did encourage King to adopt a more aggressive economic agenda by emphasizing connections between the objectives of civil rights leaders and the national labor movement. Given the critical role that labor leader A. Philip Randolph played in bringing the march together, Rustin saw this event as a great opportunity to elevate the potential partnership between labor and civil rights. He argued that “equality for Negroes is related to the greater problem of economic uplift for Negroes and poor white men. They share a common problem and have a common interest in working together for economic and social uplift. They can and must work together.” When King took the podium in front of the Lincoln Memorial for his address before a crowd of roughly twenty thousand participants, he eschewed any emphasis on furthering a relationship between the civil rights agenda and labor or broader economic concerns. Instead he focused squarely on the desperate need for African Americans to have full voting rights, demanding again and again, “Give us the ballot.”¹¹

While King’s star continued to rise nationally, trouble brewed in Montgomery. Six months after the end of the boycott, Nixon sent King a letter of resignation from his post as treasurer of the MIA. In the caustic correspondence, Nixon expressed anger that local leaders continued to minimize his contributions while treating him “as a newcomer to the MIA.” Noting he had been a treasurer only “in name and not in reality,” he reminded King and the MIA board that it had been his “dream, hope and hard work since 1932” that had tilled the soil for change in the community. A few weeks later, King and Abernathy met with Nixon in an attempt to pacify the fiery Pullman porter. They managed to convince Nixon to remain with the organization as treasurer, suggesting they would change some of the organization’s financial practices that had caused him concern for some time. Despite the truce, distrust between the parties continued unabated. Even as King gained an audience with Vice President Richard Nixon and was awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal “for the highest and noblest achievement” by an African American over the previous year, he was losing his grip on the local scene.¹²

The summer of 1957 proved tragic for one of Montgomery’s most outspoken white advocates for justice and civil rights. In January, librarian Juliette Morgan had written an editorial to a paper in Tuscaloosa in which she attributed the crisis in the South to the cowardice of white males who were afraid to stand up for justice and equality. Following the article, pressures on Morgan escalated, leading her into a deep depression. Morgan’s mother, while not supportive of her daughter’s stand for civil rights, did all she could to help in this time of need. Morgan began seeing a psychiatrist in Birmingham from whom she received shock treatments. Although she briefly rallied, in early July she overdosed on pills, leading to her death.

Many of Montgomery’s African American women wanted to honor Morgan by attending her funeral. Virginia Durr called the church rector to receive permission for the women to attend, but was told that approval for an interracial gathering would take too long. Although she had put her reputation at risk to argue for an end to segregation in her hometown, Morgan’s funeral was a fully segregated, white-only affair.¹³

Morgan’s willingness to courageously challenge white supremacy had an impact on King. He mentioned her in his memoir of the boycott, recognizing she was the first to connect the boycott to Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle for Indian independence. King also observed the onslaught of abuse she faced in the wake of her fearless public attacks on the racial mores of Montgomery. Morgan’s life and tragic death impressed upon King the high cost to southern whites who openly supported the fight against segregation.¹⁴

If whites could expect to encounter significant backlash if they were too closely tied with the struggle for justice, King began to embrace his symbolic association with the growing civil rights struggle. In an August 1957 sermon, King admitted his growing notoriety often tempted him to believe that he was special: “I can hardly walk the street in any city of this nation where I’m not confronted with people running up the street, ‘Isn’t this Reverend King of Alabama?’ Living under this isn’t easy, it’s a dangerous tendency that I will come to feel that I’m something special, that I stand somewhere in this universe because of ingenuity and that I’m important.” King claimed he prayed to God daily to “help me to see myself in my true perspective. Help me, O God, to see that I’m just a symbol of a movement.” Noting “a boycott would have taken place in Montgomery, Alabama, if I had never come to Alabama,” King admitted that “this moment would have come in history even if M. L. King had never been born.” But King had been in Montgomery, and his leadership of the movement had opened many doors for him even as they slammed shut on many African Americans in the city. Unfortunately, King’s potent oratory was not accompanied by concrete local action.¹⁵

Despite lofty goals from the MIA, the lives of boycott participants continued to be plagued with difficulty. Rosa Parks’s financial situation was particularly dire. While her arrest and personality had served the movement well, she was unable to find regular employment both during and after the boycott. As early as February 1956, Virginia Durr wrote Highlander Folk School director Myles Horton regarding Parks’s tenuous financial situation: “She has lost her job and had her rent raised and I am at the moment trying to raise some money for her to live on. It is fine to be a heroine but the price is high.” By November 1956, Durr had raised around $600 to assist Parks’s family. In a letter to Horton, Durr lamented that the funds raised to that point were “hardly enough to live on and she has had a hard time. As you know she has a terrible problem with her husband [alcohol abuse] and her mother is sick a lot and she has real troubles and cannot leave them.” As the boycott neared its conclusion, Durr was concerned about how the MIA seemed to be treating both Nixon and Parks: “the time has now gone by I am afraid for Mr. Nixon to start the voting office. I think the MIA will do it on a big scale and it should be a great success but Mrs. Parks won’t have a job there (the jobs will all go to the college people) and Mr. Nixon won’t be in charge. Perhaps he can start the Progressive Democrats again. In the meantime Rosa is still in need.”¹⁶

The MIA attempted to assist Parks during the first few months of 1957. In a memo written prior to his departure for the Gold Coast, King had directed the MIA vice president, Ralph Abernathy, to take action regarding Rosa Parks’s financial struggle. He told Abernathy that “she is in real need, and because of her tremendous self respect she has not already revealed this to the organization. After studying her situation and realizing that the whole protest revolves around her name, I am recommending that $250.00 be given to her from the Relief Fund.” He later added, “You may make it three hundred dollars ($300.00) if you feel so disposed.” Minutes from an early March relief committee meeting indicate Parks received $300 from the MIA. While Nixon and Virginia Durr remained frustrated by what they deemed to be insufficient local support for Parks, the action by the MIA indicates that King was trying to do something on her behalf.¹⁷

By midsummer, after enduring over eighteen months of harassment and threats while struggling to find consistent employment, Parks elected to leave Montgomery. In response, the MIA declared August 5 “Rosa Parks Day” and held a program on her behalf that evening. They provided her a gift of around $800 collected from area churches. A few weeks later, Parks penned a letter to King thanking him and the MIA board for their generosity. She was sad that she had to leave Montgomery but believed living near her brother in Detroit would be better for her mother and husband. While Parks left gracefully, some believed movement leaders had neglected to provide her with enough support and adequate opportunities. Nixon claimed that on the evening of the program held in her honor, he “almost cussed at Mt. Zion,” the church that hosted the event. He later added:

It’s a shame before God, here is the women responsible for this thing and got to leave home for bread. Raising a little pitiful seven or eight hundred dollars and give her then stick your chest out and think you’ve done something. But the people got carried away with Reverend King and forgot about everyone else. And like a woman told me coming down on the airplane one day, “Mr. Nixon, I don’t know what those black folks would have done in Montgomery if Reverend King had not come to town.” I said, “If Mrs. Parks had gotten up and given that cracker her seat you’d never heard of Reverend King,” which is true.

King did not disagree with Nixon’s assessment of Parks’s role in the boycott. In early September, King and Parks saw one another at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where King delivered a keynote address to commemorate the institution’s twenty-fifth anniversary. He acknowledged that Parks was in the audience, claiming “you would not have had a Montgomery story without Rosa Parks.” Parks herself had delivered a report for the anniversary meeting in which she described Montgomery as an “integration beachhead.” Parks would no longer be a part of this beachhead, however. As the summer of 1957 drew to a close, Nixon was estranged from King and the pastoral leadership of the MIA while Parks had left the city altogether. Parks and Nixon, who for years had toiled for the NAACP on both the local and statewide levels, became outsiders. As others attempted to further their labors and dreams, they found themselves on the outside looking in.¹⁸

In October, King offered his annual report to his Dexter congregation. He thanked the church for its “willingness to share me with the nation. Through the force of circumstance, I was catapulted into the leadership of a movement that has succeeded in capturing the imagination of people all over this nation and the world.” The ramifications of King’s frequent absences from the city led him to confess that “almost every week—having to make so many speeches, attend so many meetings, meet so many people, write so many articles, council with so many groups—I face the frustration of feeling that in the midst of so many things to do I am not doing anything well.” King expressed his appreciation for the ongoing support of Dexter as evidenced in not complaining when some tasks were left undone, providing support when he and his family faced physical danger, and encouraging him when opponents sought to tear him down.¹⁹

King also continued to challenge his congregation to live out Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. Because the practice of genuine concern for the well-being of one’s opponents seemed so alien to human nature, he told the people of Dexter they could expect to hear about this topic at least once a year. Although a year later King would publish an essay titled “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” in this sermon he referred to love for enemies rather than nonviolence as his “basic philosophical and theological orientation.” He encouraged his audience to remember “that love has within it a redemptive power” and advocated looking into the eyes of every person in Alabama and around the nation and saying, “I love you. I would rather die than hate you.” He maintained the belief that “through the power of this love somewhere men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. And then we will be in God’s kingdom.” For King, the language and tactics of nonviolence became a vehicle to express a more consistent and enduring commitment to the radical love ethic found in the teachings of Jesus.²⁰

An MIA newsletter penned by Jo Ann Robinson demonstrated the difficulty of embodying genuine love for one’s enemies in Montgomery. Although she recognized that both races seemed to have accepted integrated buses in Montgomery, Robinson also acknowledged that the MIA faced “a dark future just now, with some conditions getting worse, with no obvious efforts on the part of proper authorities to inaugurate ‘the equalization plan’ in their so-called separate-but-equal doctrine.” Several events led to Robinson’s negative assessment, including a gerrymandering of nearby Tuskegee that had resulted in nearly twenty-seven thousand blacks being zoned out of the city limits, preventing them from voting in local elections. In Montgomery, city architects had recently designed a $900,000 library for whites while only allotting $100,000 for a branch library for blacks. The city failed to provide adequate park and recreation facilities for Montgomery’s African American community. Robinson also noted the recent arrest of Fred Gray for sitting in the white section of the Montgomery Airport, the recent firings of African American employees from grocery stores and as truck drivers, and the stiff resistance by election officials when blacks attempted to register to vote.²¹

Although the MIA failed to gain any real traction in 1957, they went ahead with their “Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change” on the second anniversary of the boycott’s commencement. King offered a keynote address titled “Some Things We Must Do.” In his opening comments, King applauded the corporate commitment of Montgomery’s African American community, noting over the past year he had received more than sixty awards, but “the award really should be duplicated in about fifty thousand awards. Montgomery is not a drama with one actor, but it is a drama with fifty thousand actors, each playing their parts amazingly well.” After offering appreciation to fellow clergy and his wife, Coretta, King took a moment to thank the members of Dexter who “haven’t had much of a pastor the last two years” but did not complain as “they had the vision to see that this struggle is bigger than Montgomery. And they have been willing to share me with this nation and with the world.” King had dedicated more and more time beyond the local community, traveling nearly every week. While the local struggle frayed at the edges, he found appreciative national audiences eager to hear his speeches and contribute to the cause of civil rights. King had found that sometimes the bigger, broader, more idealistic struggles were easier to fight than the tedious, slow, grassroots struggles of the local community. Significantly, in a speech on how the community should proceed, he avoided identifying specific local initiatives. King naturally gravitated to issues and battles that were “bigger than Montgomery.”²²

Reporter Trezzvant W. Anderson of the prominent black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier wrote a series of articles on the situation in Montgomery a year after the boycott’s completion. His first article argued that press coverage of the boycott had “projected into a position of world eminence … a young Georgia-born Negro minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was named to head the movement strictly by force of circumstances and not by any planned action.” Anderson claimed the “real dynamo” that launched the protest was Nixon, who had been “the true leader of Montgomery’s Negroes over a span of a quarter century.” According to Anderson, King’s international prominence had resulted in “some deep scars on Montgomery Negroes. There are scars which will never be healed in our lifetime, all growing out of that unfortunate imbalance which disregards the sacrifices and toils of all and focuses on one individual while others work hard, if not harder.”²³

Anderson also questioned the true objectives of the protest. In an interview, King told Anderson that the boycott “cannot be said to have had a purpose in the sense that it was planned from the beginning to achieve a certain end. It is easy to see and understand this when one remembers that the MIA is a ‘spontaneous outgrowth’ from a precipitant incident—the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks. The protest continued as an expression of the dissatisfaction among Negroes for the discourteous treatment which they received in a system which allowed them to be segregated against.” King also reflected that “the movement took on a characteristic of love for one’s enemies and non-violent resistance which captured the imagination of men throughout the world. The purpose from this moment on was to stand firm before the world and before God with a calm and dignity of person that is unquestionably Christian.” Anderson compared King’s vague objectives with the three demands the MIA made at the beginning of the boycott: seating on a first-come, first-served basis, with blacks beginning at the back and whites at the front of the bus; drivers treating all passengers with courtesy; and the hiring of black bus drivers for primarily African American bus routes. The city still did not have black bus drivers a full year after the end of the boycott. On the positive side, Anderson emphasized the MIA’s successful carpool program “which cost the MIA approximately $1,000 a day to operate. It was effective as an economic weapon in that it caused the bus company to lose $2,000 a day for over a year.”²⁴

In his next article, Anderson discussed the circumstances surrounding Rosa Parks’s decision to leave Montgomery. He charged that the MIA, which received thousands of dollars from around the nation and the world, “failed to sustain and nourish the woman who had caused it all!” While the MIA hired a personal secretary for King at $62.50 a week and paid $5,000 annually to Mose Pleasure to serve as the executive secretary of the organization, they failed to offer office work to Parks, who had extensive experience as a secretary with the NAACP. He also insinuated that the MIA had focused almost exclusively on King’s plight while ignoring the trials of other local leaders including Nixon, who told Anderson that “they bombed my house too, but you never heard anything about it…. They didn’t put any lights around my house” as they did King’s after his home was bombed. Anderson charged that the leaders of the MIA became enamored with publicity: “In Montgomery the theme grew to such a proportion that if one of the MIA leaders went down to the corner he had to do it to the accompaniment of a press conference.”²⁵

The series unearthed the lack of economic development for many African Americans in the wake of the boycott. Anderson stressed that the MIA had not delivered on a promised credit union to aid the city’s African American citizens. He also exposed the difficult financial situation facing many of those who had sacrificed most. Although they could now ride on integrated buses, many could not find employment as a result of white backlash propagated by the White Citizens Council. Many black laborers “were feeling the pinch, and there seemed to be no help for them.”²⁶

An attempt by the MIA to discredit the series appeared in the December 7 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, when Lawrence Dunbar Reddick claimed the articles were “based upon false assumptions and filled with insinuations and inaccuracies. The main false assumption is that the test of the success of the Montgomery movement is to be found in what it has done for the Negro community of this city.” Had those who had both endured the indignity of segregated buses and sacrificed most during the yearlong protest been aware of Reddick’s views, they might have been befuddled. While not opposed to being an inspiration to others around the nation, they would have been troubled by the assertion that the true impact and effectiveness of the boycott was demonstrated by its “positive national and international effect, far more significant than any local effects.” Although Reddick acknowledged that Montgomery had improved as a result of the boycott, his views must have felt like a slap in the face to the foot soldiers of the movement.²⁷

Despite Reddick’s public relations on behalf of the MIA’s leadership, the series continued with an exploration of the employment challenges facing many working-class people in the city. Anderson cited King’s response to suspicions of a job squeeze against local African Americans: “We are helping these people as much as we can and piecing together the information and evidence that we can put our fingers on in the hope that we will find some clear-cut case to handle in this regard. We are certain that some elements in the white community are using punitive economic measures against Negroes, but we can only serve in a relief capacity to these persons until we can establish the economic discrimination as a fact.” While King recognized the problem and was attempting to provide assistance to those most affected, there was no real strategy by the MIA to address the economic injustices that continued to affect the daily lives of many African Americans in the city. Although the conclusion to Anderson’s series included qualified praise for one day of door-to-door registration efforts by MIA leaders, he concluded with a stinging critique: “Frankly, this was the only positive action I observed or learned about at the MIA headquarters, except for the 10-point program outlined for the organization.”²⁸

King did not exert significant energy in Montgomery to try to silence the critics of the MIA. Instead he devoted the early part of 1958 to the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship, an effort to urge “every Negro in the South to register to vote.” Following an executive meeting of the organization in late January, King offered a list of talking points on the campaign for SCLC speakers and members. The memorandum described the goals of the effort as doubling the number of African American voters in the South while also “liberating all Southerners, Negro and white, to extend democracy in our great nation.” On the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the SCLC launched their voting registration campaign in twenty-one cities throughout the South. In a keynote address for a rally in Miami, King cited the fight for women’s suffrage as an example of the kind of struggle and persistence needed to gain the vote. Determined to make their “intentions crystal clear,” King announced: “We must and we will be free. We want freedom now. We want the right to vote now. We do not want freedom fed to us in teaspoons over another 150 years. Under God we were born free. Misguided men robbed us of our freedom. We want it back, we would keep it forever.”²⁹

While King continued to travel on behalf of the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship, challenges in Montgomery continued. In March 1958, King responded to E. D. Nixon’s letter from a few months earlier in which he had officially resigned as treasurer of the MIA. In his November letter, Nixon had charged King and Abernathy with not following through on commitments made the previous summer: “You both agreed on some of the points raised by me, and promised to correct them. To date nothing has been done about it.” King’s letter acknowledged Nixon’s resignation and expressed his thanks “for the very fine service you have rendered to the Association since its inception.” King ended the letter acknowledging “the support you have given me all along. Let us continue together in the great struggle ahead.” Dexter deacon Robert D. Nesbitt Sr. later surmised that Nixon left the MIA because he felt he was “lost in the turn of events and receiving too little attention.” While Nixon’s desire for greater publicity played a role in his enmity with King, he was also frustrated with the lack of continuity on the ground in Montgomery. He was concerned that a largely symbolic victory over segregation had overshadowed more significant economic needs in his hometown. Nixon would remain frustrated with the outcomes of the boycott for the rest of his days.³⁰

Although his relationship with Nixon remained tense, King learned a great deal from the outspoken Pullman porter. At pivotal moments during the boycott, King listened to Nixon’s voice above all others. It was Nixon who challenged all MIA leaders to have the conviction and fortitude to be publicly identified with the new organization when the boycott began. Inspired by Nixon’s strong words, King immediately agreed. Less than two months later, as the MIA leaders contemplated settling for a compromise with city leaders, Nixon spoke plainly that he would not agree with any attempt to sell out the people. Again King sided with Nixon, noting that the people are “willing to walk,” and any compromise would not reflect the desires of the community. King also learned how to try to work with an internal critic who disagreed with aspects of his leadership. Nixon was not the last outspoken idealist who would both challenge and frustrate King. In future years, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, and Stokely Carmichael would offer similar challenges. King’s experiences with Nixon helped prepare him for future internal conflicts. Nixon exemplified the type of tireless sacrifice necessary in the struggle for racial justice.

Before the dawn of the boycott, Nixon had devoted countless hours to the NAACP. One of the organization’s major concerns had been the conviction and death sentence of Jeremiah Reeves, who in 1952 was indicted and found guilty of raping a white woman. Still in high school at the time of his arrest, Reeves had confessed to the rape under police interrogation, though his defense attorneys later claimed his confession had been unjustly coerced. Many African Americans in Montgomery held that the white housewife and Reeves were having an affair. When discovered, the woman claimed she had been raped. On March 28, 1958, Jeremiah Reeves was executed at Kilby State Prison. Following the execution, King joined around two thousand people in a prayer pilgrimage to the Alabama Capitol to protest the state’s action. He addressed the crowd, claiming the gathering was “an act of public repentance for our community for committing a tragic and unsavory injustice.” Acknowledging that they did not know definitively whether Reeves was guilty or innocent of the charges, King questioned “the severity and inequality of the penalty” he received, noting “full grown white men committing comparable crimes against Negro girls are rare ever [sic] punished, and are never given the death penalty or even a life sentence.” King took the opportunity to challenge the pattern of injustice perpetuated by the court system: “Negroes are robbed openly with little hope of redress. We are fined and jailed often in defiance of law. Right or wrong, a Negro’s word has little weight against a white opponent.” A few days later, a group of three hundred white clergy and church leaders in the community issued a statement denouncing the Easter demonstration, suggesting that instead local African American leaders should participate in organized dialogue with white leaders. When King and the MIA asked for a meeting to begin such discussions, they received no reply.³¹

King continued to take advantage of opportunities to speak on the national stage. In 1957, he began writing answers to readers’ questions in a column titled “Advice for Living” published in Ebony magazine. He also participated along with other African American leaders in a meeting with President Eisenhower on June 23, 1958. Following the meeting, King joined A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Lester B. Granger of the Urban League, and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP in crafting a statement to President Eisenhower. They urged the president to ensure national law would be enforced throughout the land, sought a White House conference to deal with the integration rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, and pleaded for full protection for those seeking to register to vote.³²

A few months after meeting with President Eisenhower, Montgomery police once again arrested King. He was charged with loitering as police claimed King failed to cooperate with a request to “move on” as he tried to gain entrance to the trial of Edward Davis, a man who had attacked Ralph Abernathy the previous week. King countered by accusing the officers of using unnecessary force including trying to break his arm, choking him, and kicking him once he got to his cell. The court found King guilty of loitering and fined him ten dollars in addition to four dollars for court fees. Following his conviction, King informed the judge that he “could not in all good conscience pay a fine for an act that I did not commit.” Instead he agreed to “accept the alternative which you provide, and that I will do without malice.” Although King intended to serve time in jail, the Montgomery police commissioner, Clyde Sellers, paid the fine in order to avoid further negative publicity for his city.³³

A few days after the trial, King received a letter from Nixon. While Nixon thought King had been foolish to take the chance of allowing the police an opportunity to assault him “behind closed doors,” he applauded the decision to serve time rather than pay a fine, calling it “the most courageous stand in that direction since Bayard Rustin, serve time [sic] in Carolina. And because of your courage in face of known danger I want to commend you for your stand for the people of color all over the world, and especially the people in Montgomery.” King thanked Nixon for his letter a few days later, noting: “I am sorry that I have not seen you in a long, long time. I hope our paths will cross in the not-too-distant future.”³⁴

Nixon’s letter to King demonstrates the competing agendas that added to the difficulties for the Montgomery struggle following the boycott. King had stressed that the struggle was “bigger than Montgomery,” and Reddick claimed that the local movement’s effectiveness was demonstrated primarily through its “positive national and international effect, far more significant than any local effects.” In contrast, while Nixon acknowledged the global dimension of King’s willingness to go to jail to confront injustice, he was “especially” pleased that King had stood for “the people in Montgomery.” As King, Abernathy, and Reddick concentrated on building a regional civil rights movement, Nixon’s heart remained first and foremost with the people of his city. Nixon longed for a return to a civil rights struggle defined by the plight of Montgomery’s African American citizens and fortified by the courageous action of local people. King’s attention was elsewhere.³⁵

In the summer of 1958, the few whites working for racial change in Montgomery continued to experience significant backlash for their support of integration. Some simply decided to leave town. Robert Graetz, the only white clergyman in the MIA, accepted a call to pastor a Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio. Soon after, the interracial woman’s group called the Fellowship of the Concerned decided to hold a daylong meeting at the Father Purcell Unit of St. Jude’s Hospital. Someone got wind of the meeting and proceeded to go through the hospital parking lot writing down the license plate numbers of those in attendance. They used this information to get the phone numbers of those affiliated with the Fellowship of the Concerned. Threatening and harassing phone calls soon followed, and participants’ names appeared in a segregationist paper called the Montgomery Home News. Olive Andrews recalled: “They didn’t publish names of black women at all but they published names of white women and their addresses and their telephone numbers. They gave the husbands’ names and their business addresses and their telephone numbers.”³⁶

Andrews later reflected that the fallout from the meeting at St. Jude’s was the first time she felt serious opposition in Montgomery to her organization. She speculated that the reason for the turmoil was that the group had elected to meet in space provided by a white institution. She had been excited about the event and had mailed out hundreds of invitations throughout the area, inadvertently alerting somebody at the post office that the interracial event was taking place. They violated a sacred southern taboo that day by eating together. They shared carry-out boxed lunches because no restaurant in Montgomery would have served them. Some of those harassing the Fellowship of the Concerned made a flier they put on windshields throughout Montgomery telling about a meeting at St. Jude’s where “nigger men and nigger women” ate together with whites.³⁷

Despite the repressive atmosphere perpetuated by many white churchgoers in Montgomery, King continued to believe the church had the opportunity to be an incredible beacon for peace and justice. He attributed some of the hypocrisy found in people who attend church while failing to be advocates for justice to the types of sermons preached in many churches. Instead of addressing deep spiritual needs, some clergy offered messages filled with positive thinking and plans for personal achievement. In a sermon titled “A Knock at Midnight” delivered in Chicago, King bemoaned the church’s failure: “Hundreds and thousands of men and women in quest for the bread of social justice are going to the church only to be disappointed.” King challenged the church to provide the bread of faith, hope, and love to a desperate world.³⁸

In the fall of 1958, Harper and Brothers published Stride toward Freedom, King’s memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott. In conjunction with the release, King embarked on a publicity tour that included several days in New York City. During a book signing appearance at a Harlem bookstore, a mentally unstable woman named Izola Curry stabbed King. While the wound did not prove fatal, he was hospitalized for several days. The stabbing forced King to adopt a slower pace for several weeks while he recovered at the home of pastor and family friend Sandy Ray in Brooklyn. When he finally returned to Montgomery over a month later, he was greeted warmly by a large crowd at the airport. In his remarks to those gathered, King announced: “I have come back, not only because this is my home, not only because my family is here, not only because you are my friends whom I love. I have come back to rejoin the ranks of you who are working ceaselessly for the realization of the ideal of Freedom and Justice for all men.” Reflecting on the outpouring of goodwill he had received after the stabbing, King surmised that “this affection was not for me alone. Indeed it was far too much for any one man to deserve. It was really for you. It was an expression of the fact that the Montgomery Story had moved the hearts of men everywhere. Through me, the many thousands of people who wrote of their admiration, were really writing of their love for you.”³⁹

The stir caused by Stride toward Freedom in Montgomery was not all related to King’s subsequent stabbing. According to Dexter member Thelma Rice, tempers flew when the book came out: “Some people felt they were left out of the publication and their contributions to the struggle diminished or overlooked.” Others believed the book failed to properly credit the labors that took place in Montgomery before King’s arrival on the scene. Many of the fractures in the town’s African American community that Trezzvant Anderson highlighted in his Pittsburgh Courier articles were further exacerbated by the appearance of King’s book.⁴⁰

The stabbing forced King to delay his annual report to Dexter by several weeks. When he finally submitted his chronicle of the previous ministry year, he thanked his congregation for their ongoing support and encouragement. Calling the year “rather difficult” personally, he noted that he faced “the brutality of police officers, an unwarranted arrest, and a near fatal stab wound” that had affected him greatly. Dexter remained supportive through “thoughtful, considerate gestures of goodwill” that helped provide King “the courage and strength to face the ordeals of that trying period.”⁴¹

The dawn of 1959 provided King with additional opportunities on both the national and international stage. In late January, a group of seventy-five Alabama African American leaders convened at Abernathy’s First Baptist Church to respond to the consistent roadblocks preventing many blacks from voting in the state. At the conclusion of the meeting, they sent a telegram to President Eisenhower seeking “more serious concern for the potentially dangerous state of racism in Alabama and to act with firmness consistent with the noblest democratic traditions of America and make real for Negroes the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.” King also had opportunity to assess the continued contributions of some local whites, describing Alabama Council on Human Relations executive director Robert E. Hughes as “a fine person, a dedicated Christian and a white southerner who is deeply devoted to the principles of freedom and justice for all.”⁴²

In February, Lawrence Reddick and the Kings departed for India in an effort to better understand the life, teachings, and impact of Gandhi and the Indian independence movement. At a press conference held upon his arrival at his hotel in New Delhi, King was asked by an Indian reporter about the degree of transformation experienced by whites in Montgomery. His response hinted at the continued resistance that had caused the local movement to stagnate: “I wish that I could say that our movement has transformed the hearts of all of Montgomery—some, no doubt; but there is a degree of bitterness and a refusal to accept a new way of human relations.” While King’s trip provided him the opportunity to interact with many Indian leaders including Prime Minister Nehru, the Quaker guide for the trip was frustrated at what he observed as the priorities of the Kings and Reddick: “All three had almost fanatical interest in snapshots, pictures, and newspaper publicity. Many Indians noticed this and even commented on it. Almost before greeting a person or group they were posing for the camera (they carried three wherever they went).” He later added that “constantly they had their eyes on the USA and the impact the trip would be making there. And so much of their conversation as we were traveling about concerned this same subject.” While the guide’s letter chronicles miscommunications that are common with international travel, his observations do raise the question of the gap between image and reality. King was certainly sincerely interested in the life and legacy of Gandhi, but the letter suggests King’s focus often drifted to how he and the movement could use this trip to further his leadership in and the effectiveness of the fight for justice in the United States.⁴³

Following their time in India, the Kings and Reddick visited the Holy Land, which was the backdrop for King’s Easter sermon a few weeks later. He shared his experience as he visited the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion: “something within began to well up. There was a captivating quality there, there was something that overwhelmed me, and before I knew it I was on my knees praying at that point. And before I knew it I was weeping. This was a great world-shaking, transfiguring experience.” King was so moved that he elected to return to his hotel alone “to meditate on the meaning of the cross and the meaning of the experience I just had.” In his reflections on Jesus’ death, King accented his willingness “to be obedient to unenforceable obligation.” He added that “the cross is an eternal expression of the length to which God is willing to go to restore a broken community.” In King’s mind, human beings had “broken up communities” and “torn up society. Families are divided; homes are divided; cultures are divided; nations are divided; generations are divided; civilizations are divided.” King then commented on Jesus’ empty tomb: “the important thing is that that Resurrection did occur” and “that grave was empty,” meaning “all the nails in the world could never pierce this truth. All of the crosses of the world could never block this love. All of the graves in the world could never bury this goodness.”⁴⁴

Montgomery’s spring elections provided some hope that goodness could indeed triumph in Montgomery. In the April 1959 MIA newsletter, Jo Ann Robinson celebrated local political changes, noting that “March 16 and March 23, 1959 are memorable days in the political life of Montgomery, Alabama.” She emphasized the defeat of both Clyde Sellers and Mayor Gayle, both of whom had been primary adversaries of the MIA during the boycott. Robinson credited successful voting drives for making the difference: “The relentless efforts on the part of Negroes to get qualified as voters bore some fruit in the election. The total number of qualified voters in this group was less than two thousand five hundred (2,500). But leadership on the part of Mr. Rufus A. Lewis and the precinct workers coupled with a spirit of unity and determination paid off.” Leaders of the White Citizens Council did not share Robinson’s enthusiasm. They stressed the pivotal role African Americans had played in the defeat of Mayor Gayle, arguing most had done so “in obedience to instructions given them by the Negro bosses of the Montgomery Improvement Association acting in the absence of, but, as we believe, with the approval of Martin Luther King. All evidence is absolutely conclusive that in Monday’s election the Negro votes will decide who will be mayor of Montgomery unless the white voters wake up, fight Negro bloc voting with white bloc voting, get behind one of the two candidates and thus take the balance of power out of control of race agitators.”⁴⁵

Perhaps taking their cue from the WCC, in April the board of Trinity Presbyterian Church sent a letter to Mrs. Arnold Smith, who was serving as president of the congregation’s women’s ministry. The letter instructed Smith to stop being so outspoken regarding the need for racial justice in Montgomery, noting “We would earnestly recommend to you that in your program of work you avoid these questions and leave them out of your consideration entirely.” Some chose to use violence rather than letters to communicate their displeasure with those agitating for racial change. Throughout Alabama, there were “several serious incidents of beatings and kidnappings” of African Americans. Fred Shuttlesworth, the president of Birmingham’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, sent King a letter seeking more direct organization and action throughout the state. Shuttlesworth had grown weary of conferences and summits that failed to produce “positive action.” He urged King to recognize the limits of oratory, for “when the flowery speeches have been made, we still have the hard job of getting down and helping people to work to reach the idealistic state of human affairs which we desire.” In late May, three Montgomery African Americans were severely beaten and MIA member Horace G. Bell disappeared near a lake in Selma. When Bell’s body was recovered a few days later, authorities claimed he had drowned, but local blacks suspected he had been but the latest victim of racial violence. The incidents led King to write to the Alabama governor, John Malcolm Patterson, seeking prompt action as “to allow these incidents to go without public cognizance of them will encourage greater and more frequent acts of violence by these irresponsible persons.”⁴⁶

During the summer of 1959, King continued to lobby for structural change while also attacking the illogical nature of common racist arguments. King believed that in order to effectively work for social change in Montgomery, one must realize that biblically based and logically sound arguments would not sway those committed to segregation. In a sermon titled “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” King argued: “There are those who are soft minded enough to argue that racial segregation should be maintained because the Negroes lag behind in academic, health, and moral standards. They are not tough minded enough to see that if there are lagging standards in the Negro community they are themselves the result of segregation and discrimination.” The real danger is that politicians often prey upon soft-mindedness to preserve power at the expense of justice: “Little Rock Arkansas will always remain a shameful reminder to the American people that this nation can sink to deep dungeons of moral degeneracy when an irresponsible, power-thirsty head of state appeals to a constituency that is not tough minded enough to see through its malevolent designs.”⁴⁷

King also challenged the continual temptation to conform and remain silent during threatening times. Five years into his pastorate, he still faced the tepid qualities of many professionals in his congregation. Emboldened for a season during the boycott, many gave into their inclination to not rock the boat after the protest ended. King directly challenged their passivity: “We cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or the peoples of the world if we are willing to sell the future of our children for our personal and immediate safety and comfort. Moreover, we must learn that the passive acceptance of an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby become a participant in its evil.”⁴⁸

King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference faced growing criticism as the year wore on. When Jet magazine published an article questioning the organization, King wrote a letter to the periodical’s Washington bureau chief defending the SCLC by claiming “our aim is neither to grab headlines nor have a multiplicity of mass meetings on the question of registration and voting; we are concerned about getting the job done.” He emphasized the grassroots efforts of some in the organization, noting “more than fifteen of the leading ministers of Montgomery, Alabama took a day off and went into numerous homes to determine how many people were registered and encourage those who were eligible to do so.” This growing national criticism of the SCLC for their lack of tangible accomplishments led a growing number of members to urge King to relocate to Atlanta so he could devote more time to the floundering organization.⁴⁹

Convinced of the pressing need for stronger day-to-day leadership of the SCLC, King decided to accept an offer from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to join his father as co-pastor of the church. It was a difficult decision to leave Dexter, but King announced his resignation following Sunday services on November 29, 1959. A draft prepared for the occasion included the following notes: “Little did I know when I came to Dexter that in a few months a movement would commence in Montgomery that would change the course of my life forever…. Unknowingly and unexpectedly, I was catapulted into the leadership of the Montgomery movement. At points I was unprepared for the symbolic role that history had thrust upon me. Everything happened so quickly & spontaneously that I had no time to think through the implications of such leadership.” Many in the church responded with words of encouragement, including deacon T. H. Randall, who wrote a letter appreciating “the kind of life” King had lived as pastor, noting his “sermons and talks have served as a compelling force in our lives—urging us to live the full life thus broadening the horizons of our responsibilities beyond our own church.”⁵⁰

A few short days after his resignation from Dexter, King addressed the MIA at the organization’s annual conference on Nonviolence and Social Change. His speech included a detailed update on progress in the local struggle for integration and justice. Noting the MIA “is still attempting to make this community a better place to live” and remained “active and deeply committed to its task,” King highlighted its contributions to many community projects, including a $20,000 gift to construct a new YMCA and $11,000 to support Vernon Johns’s Farm and City Enterprise, a cooperative grocery store in the area. King hoped Farm and City would “stand as a symbol of what the Negro could do by pooling his economic resources.” He also stressed the increased patronage of African American–owned businesses since the boycott, a tactic regularly encouraged at MIA mass meetings. The organization had also contributed money to several legal cases, including the defense of Jeremiah Reeves. Perhaps the biggest contribution of the MIA in King’s mind was its role as the first and best place for the community’s African American citizens to go when they had some difficulty. The MIA provided “an organization, with its doors opened everyday in the week, that will fight” for justice and help ensure the well-being of Montgomery’s most vulnerable citizens. By taking on this role, the MIA was “doing a day to day job that is a persistent threat to the power structure of Montgomery.”⁵¹

King went on to highlight specific issues that faced the community. Regarding the dearth of recreation facilities for African Americans, the MIA had chosen to go to court to seek equity and access to all parks. In response, the City of Montgomery elected to close down all city parks, a policy that remained in effect for several years. He also noted that the county school board had failed to respond to a three-month-old letter asking that a plan for integration be spelled out for the citizens of the county. As the school year began, the MIA executive committee wrote a letter to the Montgomery County Board of Education noting that over five years had “elapsed and no discernable move has been made toward integrating the schools of Montgomery.” The letter was not intended as “a threat nor an ultimatum” but as a call for the board “to begin in good faith to study the idea, and then provide a reasonable start.” Given that the letter received no response, King announced, “we have no alternative but to carry this issue into the federal courts.”⁵²

Near the end of his speech, King called those present to remember that “the freedom struggle in Montgomery was not started by one man, and it will not end when one man leaves.” He encouraged them to unite behind the new president of the organization as “new divisive forces are at work in our community. In the mad quest to conquer us by dividing us they are working through some Negroes who will sell their race for a few dollars and a few cents.” King concluded by noting his own personal faith as they faced the days ahead: “I have no doubt that the midnight of injustice will give way to the daybreak of freedom. My faith in the future does not grow out of a weak and uncertain thought. My faith grows out of a deep and patient trust in God who leaves us not alone in the struggle for righteousness, and whose matchless power is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man.”⁵³

King rightly noted the central role the MIA now played in Montgomery. Before the boycott began, however, both Nixon and the WPC had served as a clearinghouse for many in Montgomery’s African American community. The WPC president, Jo Ann Robinson, had enough influence to gain an audience with the mayor and city commissioners. When working people faced legal troubles, they had turned to Nixon. As people looked to the MIA after the boycott, the roles for both Nixon and the WPC became less clear. Following his resignation from the MIA, Nixon turned his attention back to union work through his membership in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. By contrast, the MIA had become Robinson’s primary outlet for community engagement. Other WPC members also faced persecution from local authorities. WPC member Thelma Glass remembered the slow demise of her organization after the boycott: “the city began to retaliate. We began to lose members, they got threats—if they stayed in the council, [they’d lose] their teaching jobs—people had children to feed and all that, and you know, about the situation. So gradually, membership just dropped and dropped until on campus I remember there were just four of us left, Jo Ann Robinson, and J. E. Pierce and Mary Frances Burkes and myself.” In the years following the boycott, the power of the MIA rendered many other African American community organizations and leaders ineffective and inconsequential.⁵⁴

King’s decision to leave Montgomery was not only a response to the needs of the SCLC. According to many who were in the city at the time, some in the congregation were ready for a new pastor who would prove less controversial and would be more available to attend to the day-to-day pastoral responsibilities. King family friend Mrs. O. B. Underwood later remembered “rumors all over Montgomery that Dexter did not want Rev. King, and they wanted to get rid of him.” Underwood also reflected on the division between some of the younger members at Dexter and those with longer tenures in the congregation. College students and other young adults felt like they were excluded from “the workings and operations of Dexter.” Underwood believed part of the problem was “that many people might have felt threatened by him.” Dexter member Warren Brown also credited internal tensions within Dexter as a motivation for King’s decision to leave Montgomery. Brown emphasized the pressure applied to many professionals who attended Dexter due to their association with King and thus the local civil rights efforts: “Some of the church members complained that the pastor was hurting their cause. Working persons were being threatened by their employers. The old comfort zones were being disturbed.” According to Brown, King challenged those who sought to avoid involvement: “Reverend King stood in the pulpit and said one Sunday: ‘Those who are working and have jobs might not lift a finger or say a word in support of or in defense of the movement, but they think no more of you than they do of those who are protesting. In fact, they (meaning the local white establishment) do not think as much of you as they do those who are protesting. When it is over, whatever the outcome, you will benefit just as much as anyone else, even those who will lose their lives.’” Although King could issue such bold challenges, his words to Deacon Robert Nesbitt Sr. when he informed him of the decision support Brown’s contention: “The explanation was not long in coming: ‘Pressure is being put on the teachers and professional people in the congregation. They are having to take abuses that they could avoid, if I were out of the picture.’”⁵⁵

Local barber and Dexter member Nelson Malden also believed the pressure from many professionals at Dexter was a major influence on King’s decision to leave the city: “in carrying out his mission, Reverend King was interfering with the bread and butter of some of the folk in the church. I sensed he wanted to remain in Montgomery.” Dexter member Claressa W. Chambliss came to a similar conclusion, noting that she “began to notice a change in my pastor. Many of his followers and supporters were withdrawing. I could tell from his sermons he was a little disgusted and hurt. He was being so brave and his followers were getting weak. People started coming forward as if they wanted to be a leader. There was a definite turn in Reverend King’s disposition. One could hear it in his sermons and speeches.” Dexter deacon Richard Jordan concurred: “Some of the leaders of the movement and open supporters began to withdraw from Reverend King. His Montgomery power base was beginning to weaken. People were not distancing themselves from him because they really wanted to withdraw. Pressure from certain corners forced them to put some distance between themselves and Reverend King.” While in part King was pulled toward Atlanta by a chorus of voices urging him to take a much more active role in guiding the SCLC, the timing of the decision was affected greatly by the push from a portion of his Dexter congregation who longed for a more attentive and less controversial pastor to lead them.⁵⁶

On Sunday January 31, 1960, King preached his last sermon as the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Reflecting on his six years in Montgomery, King gave a sermon titled “Lessons from History.” He emphasized a theme he had first sounded even before the boycott began: that throughout history God has triumphed over evil. King also took the opportunity to critique militarism, calling it “suicidal” and the “twin of imperialism.” In a closing charge to his congregation, he reminded them that “a great creative idea cannot be stopped” and that “the quest for human freedom and dignity” was coming to fruition around the globe.⁵⁷

Later that evening, Dexter offered a special program to honor the King family. In his remarks, King affirmed the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, who succeeded him as president: “I believe that under his leadership, Montgomery will grow to higher heights, and new creative things will be done. I hope that you will be able to find a pastor to this church who will join him and the movement in this city and will carry you on to higher heights and do many of the things that I wanted to do and that I couldn’t do.” He also took a few moments to reflect on how he had grown since arriving in the city nearly six years earlier:

And I know this God enough to know that He’s with us. I’ve come to believe in prayer stronger, stronger than ever before, since I’ve been in Montgomery. And I’m convinced that when we engage in prayer, we are not engaging in just the process of autosuggestion, just an endless soliloquy or a monologue, but we are engaged in a dialogue. And we are talking with a father who is concerned about us. And I’ve come to believe that. Maybe this is rationalization. Maybe I have believed more in a personal God over these last few years because I needed Him. But I have felt His power working in my life in so many instances, and I have felt an inner sense of calmness in dark and difficult situations, an inner strength I never knew I had.

Among the many contributions Montgomery made to the life and ministry of King was as the location where his faith became personal and sustaining. ⁵⁸

The following evening, the MIA held a banquet to honor the Kings. In his address to an organization he had led since its inception, he downplayed the role he had played: “although you’ve been kind enough to say nice things about me, Martin Luther King didn’t bring about the hour. Martin Luther King happened to be on the scene when the hour came. And you see my friends, when the hour comes you are just projected into a symbolic structure. And even if Martin Luther King had not come to Montgomery, the hour was here.” He added that when the boycott began there was already “a preexisting unity here that caused you to substitute tired feet for tired souls and walk the streets of Montgomery until segregation had to fall before the great and courageous witness of a marvelous people.”⁵⁹

When King first announced his plans to relocate to Atlanta to devote more time to the SCLC, the organization issued a press release to communicate the rationale for the decision that included some poignant musings from a Dexter member: “Rev. King will not truly be leaving us because part of him always will remain in Montgomery, and at the same time, part of us will go with him. We’ll always be together, everywhere. The history books may write it Rev. King was born in Atlanta, and then came to Montgomery, but we feel that he was born in Montgomery in the struggle here, and now he is moving to Atlanta for bigger responsibilities.” It would be hard to find better words to describe the fundamental impact King’s six years in Montgomery had upon his life and preaching.⁶⁰

King came to Montgomery well prepared to both pastor an African American Baptist church and to play a supporting role in the growing struggle for civil rights. In many ways, King left Montgomery the same as when he arrived six years earlier. His theology and commitments had changed very little. He continued to be suspicious of the excesses of capitalism, to call for greater international cooperation and an end to colonialism, and to hope for an end to segregation and racism through the establishment of a redeemed and beloved community in America. In other ways, however, King was a transformed person. Evil was no longer a theory, but something he and his fellow activists faced day in and day out. Its passing was not inevitable, but would require tireless struggle and sacrifice. He knew full well the resolve of those in power to maintain the status quo. And King was prepared to suffer and even die to resist this evil. This was possible because his faith had moved from an intellectual theory to a heartfelt belief. No longer was King’s call to ministry only understood as a way to contribute to society. Now ministry was about leading a community to trust in the power and justice and righteousness of God even when evil seemed to triumph.

Through the crucible of a local struggle for justice, King’s oratorical skills shined brightly. After learning how his words could stir a congregation, he set his sights on stirring a nation to fulfill its promises of justice and equality. King also grew in his capacity for connecting with professionals and the working class, black and white. His sermons and speeches demonstrate his effectiveness in speaking the language of people from all walks of life. As he assumed local leadership, King began to adjust to being the symbol of the movement. He and his family became targets. Exploding dynamite and the steely blade of a knife reminded King that being a symbol had its price. Despite threats and even violence, King maintained hope in the prevailing power of God when it is unleashed through the love-infused strategy of nonviolence.

After the boycott, King found it easier to turn his attention to regional and national struggles, as he pulled away from the local battle. Although he would be involved in many local campaigns over the remaining eight years of his life, never again would he play such a pivotal role from start to finish. King was more than just a symbol in Montgomery; he was a part of the movement and critical to its success. He learned a great deal from the city about God, about leadership, and about sacrifice. During a mass meeting shortly after the bombing of King’s home, Dr. Moses Jones told the crowd that the city had waited too long to kill Martin Luther King Jr., claiming that King “is in all of us now.” The people of Montgomery were also in King, and he would be a different man the rest of his days. Although King’s civil rights leadership may have been conceived in Atlanta, Georgia, in Montgomery he was becoming King.⁶¹