Becoming King

by Troy Jackson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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