Becoming King Read online

  At first, King was reluctant to join the proposed bus protest. When Nixon called early Friday morning asking for his involvement and support, King was hesitant. Nixon later recalled: “The third person I called was Martin Luther King. He said, ‘Brother Nixon, let me think about it awhile and call me back,’ and I called him back. He said, ‘Yeah, Brother Nixon, I decided, I’m going to go along with you.’ And I said, ‘That’s fine, because I called 18 other people and I told them they’re going to meet at your church this evening.’” Meanwhile Robinson and a few of her students had left the anonymous boycott notices at a local church where a clergy meeting was scheduled for that morning. Soon nearly every pastor in Montgomery knew of the proposed boycott, and they joined other community leaders at Dexter that evening.4

  When she returned to the Alabama State College campus, Robinson discovered that the college president, H. Councill Trenholm, wanted to see her immediately. Trenholm confronted Robinson regarding her role in making the 52,500 leaflets that were distributed. Fearing she might be fired, Robinson explained the conditions that had led to the proposed boycott and the significant role of the WPC in bringing these injustices to light. Trenholm’s response was more positive than she expected: “Your group must continue to press on for civil rights.” The president did require her to reimburse the school for the mimeographed copies she had made and let her know that her role in the protests must be behind the scenes, not involving the school directly. Assured that her job was safe at least for the time being, Robinson headed to Dexter that evening for the proposed organizational meeting.5

  The gathering at Dexter proved contentious. Since Nixon had left town early Friday to fulfill work commitments, Reverend L. Roy Bennett, the president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, presided at the meeting. According to King, Bennett attempted to stymie debate by eliminating any group participation or discussion and instead charged ahead with concrete plans for the upcoming boycott. After nearly an hour of filibustering, Bennett agreed to open up the floor for questions and discussion. The majority voted to proceed with the one-day boycott and began working on an ad hoc transportation system to be put in place on Monday to help African Americans get around town without using the buses. They also revised Robinson’s original statement, removing a reference to Claudette Colvin and adding information about a mass meeting to be held on Monday evening at Holt Street Baptist Church. King and Abernathy used Dexter’s mimeograph machine to again produce thousands of leaflets for distribution throughout the city. While working, they discussed the leadership needs the hour demanded. According to Abernathy, King was wary of Bennett, believing he would elevate the clergy into strategic positions at the expense of the people whom they were asking to make the real sacrifice by not riding city buses.6

  On Saturday, ministers and other community leaders worked to distribute the leaflets. Mary Fair Burks and Jo Ann Robinson ran into their share of challenges: “Despite our early start, progress was slow. Often we not only had to take time to explain the leaflet, but also first to read it to those unable to do so.” This experience interacting with the city’s poorer citizens proved an eye-opening experience for Burks, who taught at Alabama State College, as boycott communication efforts forced her out of her middle-class world: “It was my first encounter with masses of the truly poor and disenfranchised. I remember thinking that not even a successful boycott would solve the problems of poverty and illiteracy which I saw that day.” Burks was not alone in her observations. Many pastors also encountered the challenging living conditions faced by many of Montgomery’s African American residents for the very first time. Edgar French, the pastor of Hillard Chapel AME Zion, noted: “Although there was not time for pastoral visits, ministers had been closer to the realities of living in slum areas than ever before. They had really been among poorly-clad and undernourished children, alcoholics, and many other forms of human deprivation they hardly realized existed. The stark evils of social and economic injustices experienced in those few hours made it easy for many of the ministers to discard their well-prepared manuscripts at the Sunday worship hour, and to speak concerning the evils of their day.” The task of communicating about the planned boycott proved to be as galvanizing for Montgomery’s African American community as Parks’s arrest had been.7

  That evening, Mary Fair Burks also experienced the aloofness of some of Montgomery’s black professionals. Due to delays in explaining the handbills that announced the proposed one-day boycott to the masses in Montgomery, Robinson and Burks were an hour late to a scheduled bridge party. Burks remembered: “Our partners were irate, despite our explanations…. And so about one hundred black women played bridge a scant thirty-six hours before the boycott began, much like Nero had played his fiddle while Rome burned. That was the black middle class before the boycott.” Although not every African American understood or embraced the proposed protest, Burks and Robinson worked tirelessly to make sure everybody, regardless of economic class, would know about the boycott by Monday morning.8

  In addition to the leaflets, nearly all the African American congregations heard about the boycott from their pastors that Sunday. Stories in both the Alabama Tribune and the Montgomery Advertiser bolstered efforts to inform the entire black community about the one-day protest. Local television news stations also highlighted the effort in their broadcasts. While some wanted the plot to remain a secret to surprise the city, the media coverage served to inform those who had not yet heard of the plan and to legitimize the effort in the minds of others. Many united around the proposed boycott, arousing interest that circumvented the typically rigid class distinctions. Rosa Parks’s standing in the community contributed to this widespread support. As Mary Fair Burks put it: “Mrs. Parks’s arrest penetrated the indifference of the middle class and shook the passivity of the masses. The educated class realized that what had happened to her could happen to any one of them. Most of the passive masses did not know Rosa, but when the boycott was called, they identified with her situation. They had experienced it all too often.” Though most black residents did not know Parks, the majority of black leaders and professionals did not know the so-called “passive masses.” Before the arrest of Parks and the subsequent planned protest, they had crossed paths primarily in the public sphere. Most black civil rights leaders in Montgomery did not have enough evidence to determine how passive the working class was until this moment, when the masses proved more than ready to get involved.9

  The boycott of city buses allowed a disparate African American community to unite to unleash a perfect storm upon white leaders in Montgomery. Black professionals saw Rosa Parks as a respectable citizen who was mistreated and abused for conducting herself with silent dignity. No matter how much African Americans in the Jim Crow South had accomplished, they remained vulnerable second-class citizens subject to the whims of white authority figures. They also saw the opportunity to challenge the dehumanizing system of segregation that affected every black regardless of class or degree of respectability. Meanwhile, the working class bore the brunt of the specific dehumanizing experience of riding buses in Montgomery. They endured the racist abuses of some of the drivers. They identified with how tired and weary Parks was on the night of her arrest. The situation on the city buses was a quality-of-life issue for the working class of Montgomery, and they proved ready to sacrifice to change the situation.

  On the Sunday morning following Parks’s arrest, King chose to address the “awful silence of God” with his Dexter congregation. King suggested that although throughout history people had “appealed to God in desperate tones” to bring justice, “evil continued to rise to astronomical proportions.” King admitted that, in a world filled with evil and injustice, maintaining the necessary faith to fight for change would not be easy. Despite the enormity of the challenge, King called on his congregation to join a citywide, one-day boycott of city buses. While not brushing aside experiences to the contrary, King called for action to overcome “the iron feet of oppres
sion.” King’s text for the sermon, found in Isaiah 45:15, asserts, “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” The context of the verse, however, proclaims the creative and redeeming power of God leading to the salvation of Israel and the downfall of their oppressors. Over the next two months, thousands in Montgomery proved willing to walk so God’s justice would no longer be hidden by the wickedness of white supremacy. Inspired by God and the people, King would learn to lead as they courageously encountered the depths of evil together.10

  As Monday morning dawned, many watched city buses go by their homes and places of business, wondering how successful the boycott would be. To their great surprise and satisfaction, the boycott was nearly 100 percent effective. Ralph Abernathy credited another element of good fortune that helped make the effort so successful. The previous day, the city’s police commissioner had appeared on local television and radio assuring police protection for blacks who chose to ride despite “goon squads” that would threaten them. “The Commissioner also said that there would be two squad cars—one in front and one behind every bus that rolled on Monday morning.” According to Abernathy, “Negroes who had not really been swept into the spirit of the movement, upon seeing policemen riding behind the buses, felt they were there to force them to ride, and rebelled against it by joining with those who were walking.” During a testimony time at a mass meeting held during the boycott, a participant recounted how she had joined the boycott upon seeing police at her bus stop that morning. Given the reputation of white police officers for violence against African Americans, she decided to avoid the bus stop and walked to work instead. In the end, only a handful of Montgomery’s African American citizens rode the bus that Monday, December 5, 1955. It proved to be an extremely successful beginning of what would become a yearlong protest.11

  Early that morning, Fred Gray left a meeting with King and Robinson and headed to the courthouse as the defense attorney for Rosa Parks’s trial, which was scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Gray had to weave through hundreds of people to make it into the packed courtroom. After originally intending to charge Parks under a city code demanding segregation, the state instead convicted her in violation of chapter 1, section 8, of an obscure 1945 Alabama law requiring segregation on buses. The court sentenced Parks to either pay a ten-dollar fine or face fourteen days in jail. Fred Gray immediately appealed the ruling on Parks’s behalf. Nixon later remembered the community’s response: “On December 5, 1955, the black man was born again in Montgomery. On that morning when they tried Mrs. Rosa Parks, the whole courtroom and all out in the street was crowded with black men. They was saying, ‘Brother Nick, Brother Nick, what’s happening?’ I tells them she’s found guilty. They was mad then. They said, ‘Brother Nick, if you don’t come out, you know what we gonna do? We gonna come in there and get you.’ There must’ve been over five hundred men there.” Parks’s guilty verdict, coupled with the early success of the boycott, further galvanized the city’s African American community as they prepared to meet at Holt Street Baptist Church that evening.12

  In the afternoon, community leaders gathered in an attempt to organize in the wake of the success of the one-day boycott. They met at Reverend Bennett’s Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, with Reverend Bennett again presiding. The decision to have the meeting at Mt. Zion reflected both the low level of trust between many of the city’s pastors and an attempt to remain united as the protest developed. Many believed the non-Baptist ministers would not have attended had the meeting been held at the Baptist Center under the direction of Reverend Hubbard, who served as president of the Baptist Ministers Conference. Therefore they chose to meet at a Methodist church in order to bolster whatever frail unity existed in the moment. As had been the case a few days earlier, the meeting began with attempts to wrest control away from Reverend Bennett, who again held onto the floor. At this point, Robert Matthews of the NAACP suggested that some in the meeting were trying to spy on the proceedings in order to report back to white leaders. In the midst of the chaos, those gathered finally decided to form an executive committee that would meet behind closed doors to determine the shape of the organization and make plans for the mass meeting that evening. According to Abernathy, eighteen people were chosen to serve on the committee.13

  When the executive meeting began, Abernathy suggested they call their new organization the “Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA),” a proposal that was quickly accepted. The meeting’s momentum soon slowed as several leaders wanted to be able to keep their affiliation with the MIA secret. Most local clergy had learned to be cautious in challenging racial mores, as they balanced advocating for their race while not unduly offending white officials. Nixon was incensed: “We are acting like little boys. Somebody’s name will have to be known, and if we are afraid we might just as well fold up right now…. We’d better decide now if we are going to be fearless men or scared boys.” Chastised by Nixon, those present agreed to publicly endorse an indefinite continuation of the one-day boycott until certain conditions were met.14

  As one of their first orders of business, the MIA selected officers. Many of those gathered had served in various leadership capacities over the years. Few of them would have ridden buses that day even if a boycott had not been in effect. While the new organization needed a leader who would command the respect of the people in the room, they also needed someone who would be able to connect with those who were making the real sacrifice by giving up the use of public transportation. Although Nixon had the strongest connection with the black working class, his unlearned use of the English language and lack of education prevented many professionals from uniting behind him. Rufus Lewis and NAACP chair Robert Matthews did not have the support of the working class. The more established clergy, such as Baptist Ministers Conference president and Bethel Baptist Church pastor Hillman H. Hubbard, or Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance president Reverend L. Roy Bennett, had a history of compromise with city fathers that disqualified them, while younger pastors, like Uriah J. Fields of Bell Street Baptist Church, had not yet earned the respect of the more established leaders.

  Those gathered had to navigate the distrust, rivalries, and jealousies while also finding a spokesperson who could connect with African Americans across class lines. Independently, Nixon and Lewis believed King was the person who could become a unifying figure for the trying days ahead. When the nominations for president opened, Lewis hastily submitted King’s name, and he was unanimously elected to the position. When he later reflected on this turn of events, King claimed that if he had taken time to consider the position, “I would have declined the nomination.” When some friends had encouraged him to pursue the presidency of the local NAACP chapter a few weeks earlier, he and Coretta had decided he “should not then take on any heavy community responsibilities, since I had so recently finished my thesis, and needed to give more attention to my church work.” Without the time to contemplate the possible implications of his new role, King became president of the newly formed MIA.15

  Not everyone was enthusiastic about the decision to place King in charge of the new organization. Uriah Fields coveted the job as well. Years later, Fields claimed: “It was given to King because some of the older ministers didn’t want it. I feel that there was a strong feeling as to whether King or I should’ve had that position. Because of what I had been involved in. But it went to King. And notice that immediately after they selected King president, they elected me secretary.” Despite the undercurrents of jealousy that were bound to emerge among the town’s leaders, all united behind King. Before adjourning, they organized a subcommittee to continue meeting in order to draw up a list of demands they would bring to the city and the bus company.16

  Nixon, Abernathy, and Reverend Edgar French had the responsibility of drawing up a list of demands as conditions for ending the boycott. The first was a plan that the WPC had been pushing for several years: Seating on the buses would be first-come, first-served, with blacks
filling the bus from the back to the front, and whites from the front to the back. Once patrons had filled all the seats, no one would be expected to yield their seat to an oncoming passenger. Second, they called for more courteous treatment of customers by the bus drivers. The third demand concerned hiring black bus drivers for predominantly African American routes. This idea, which Uriah Fields had included in a letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser over a year and a half earlier, reflected Nixon’s desire for black economic development to be one of the significant desired objectives of the protest. French typed up these three demands later in the day so they could be presented at that evening’s mass meeting.17

  The demands did not include an end to segregation on the city’s buses. In an interview conducted during the boycott, Jo Ann Robinson attempted to explain why: “There is a state law requiring segregation, and all we do must come under that law. We cannot change the law by protesting. It must be declared unconstitutional through the courts. We can get our demands under the present law, however, this protest is more far reaching than that. It is making the white man more respective of the Negro, and it shows him that the Negro can be a threat to his economic security which has kept him in his position of superiority to some extent.” Alabama Tribune editor Emory O. Jackson basically agreed with Robinson’s assessment, noting that the boycott was only “incidentally a protest against segregation. That is the first observation, it seems to me, which should be emphasized and kept in mind. What has happened is the release of pent up resentment over the recurring, unceasing and unrelenting abuse, humiliation and disrespect accorded Negro passengers, especially the lady folk.” Jackson applauded the efforts of Montgomery’s black citizens: “For placid, conservative yielding Montgomery leadership to get worked up into what has been described as a ‘boycott’ had to be something that touched more sharply than racial segregation, must have been a reaction from segregation more painful than the mere shameful practice of an annoying discrimination.” The African American people of Montgomery were ready to act.18