Becoming King

by Troy Jackson

  King made his way to Holt Street Baptist Church aware that he had been thrust into a position that he had neither expected nor sought. King later admitted: “When I went to Montgomery as a pastor, I had not the slightest idea that I would later become involved in a crisis in which non-violent resistance would be applicable. I neither started the protest nor suggested it. I simply responded to the call of the people for a spokesman.” He had little time to prepare for what would be the most significant address of his young life. He felt the burden of the task as he attempted to construct “a speech that was expected to give a sense of direction to a people imbued with a new and still unplumbed passion for justice.” With only enough time to prepare a brief outline, King set out for Holt Street. Traffic was so thick around the church that he had to park several blocks away. The service began with two hymns, prayer, and Scripture, followed by what would be the first of many memorable addresses delivered by King.19

  In his Holt Street address, King reminded the large audience of the long history of intimidation on the city’s buses and discussed the specific circumstances surrounding Parks’s arrest. Employing a phrase he had used the day before in his sermon at Dexter, King charged, “And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” Aware of the history of divisions among the city’s black community, King called for unity as they worked together for justice. In his stirring conclusion, King proclaimed: “Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say, ‘There lived a race of people, a black people, “fleecy locks and black complexion,” a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization.’” King later remembered the enthusiastic response to his speech: “As I sat listening to the continued applause I realized that this speech had evoked more response than any speech or sermon I had ever delivered, and yet it was virtually unprepared.” Few who were there would ever forget the impact that King’s speech had on them that early December evening.20

  Thousands heard the speech, either from seats in the auditorium, through a public address system in the church basement, or on makeshift speakers placed outside of the building. Many saw in the people’s response the dawning of a new day for Montgomery’s African American citizens. Rufus Lewis claimed the speech “stimulated the people more than anything has ever stimulated them as long as I’ve been here.”21 The Montgomery resident Idessa Williams Redden was so moved by King’s speech that she shouted, “Lord, you have sent us a leader.” Not surprisingly, Nixon’s perspective on the evening was different; he described the mass meeting as “the most amazing and the most heartening thing I have seen in my life. The leaders were led. It was a vertical thing.” While the speech did inspire the people and elevated King’s stature in the minds of the community, the converse is true as well. The response of the crowd stimulated something in King. He had risen to the occasion, and the people’s response emboldened him. King was not a regular patron of the city’s buses. He was not boycotting anything. The African American people of Montgomery allowed him to participate in the boycott in the role of the president and spokesperson of the MIA. As Nixon aptly stated, King was led, and his life and ministry would never be the same.22

  No longer a one-day event, the bus boycott galvanized Montgomery’s African American community. Organizers of the protest launched creative solutions to accommodate those whose jobs necessitated significant daily travel. Their first transportation alternative was to enlist African American–owned taxis to offer service at a reduced rate equivalent to local bus fares. In response, the city enacted a law that set a minimum rate for taxis and threatened full prosecution for any who dared to break this mandate. Again ingenuity prevailed, as boycott leaders set up an intricate carpooling system that allowed residents to get the transportation they needed. The car pools served to further unify the community as strangers and casual acquaintances began to spend significant time together each day. Those wealthy enough to own vehicles volunteered to drive working-class citizens, further breaking down barriers between the classes. As they rode, they shared the joys and trials of the boycott with one another. Alabama State College history professor Norman Walton emphasized the significance of the car pool in solidifying the cohesion of the participants: “It has closed the gap between the Negro groups based on education, income and position. In Montgomery, there is unity, the lowest person doing her humble task, rides to work in a Cadillac, a jalopy or a truck. The college professor talks with the maid and the drunkard to the minister, but with a common interest that brings them together.” These unplanned conversations and burgeoning relationships did as much to solidify the boycott as any speech or mass meeting.23

  Meanwhile King continued to shepherd Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. After a guest speaker filled the Dexter pulpit on December 12, King preached the following three Sundays to his home congregation, including a Christmas sermon entitled “The Light That Shineth amid Darkness.” In the midst of the darkness of white stubbornness, hatred, and exclusion, King emphasized the necessity of love to his congregation that Christmas morning. His words had more force now, however, as his descriptions of darkness were not theological abstractions but morally tangible and politically all too real. Over the coming months, King’s sermons would continue to grow in depth, urgency, and power. A technically accomplished preacher before the boycott, King’s speaking was now imbued with a passion that stirred his congregation, his community, and eventually the nation.24

  Although he was pastor of a silk-stocking church in Montgomery, King’s time at Ebenezer had prepared him for dealing with both the professional and working-class citizens of Montgomery. His decisions to take on summer jobs as a teen doing manual labor helped him more effectively communicate with those who had depended on the buses for daily transportation. Since his arrival at Dexter, he had hoped to attract more working-class and poor blacks to his church. Even if changing the makeup of his congregation proved difficult, King enjoyed the opportunity to address the working class regularly at mass meetings. He also attempted to listen to and learn from those who were sacrificing most so the boycott could continue. King’s ability to effectively interact with even the boycott’s most vulnerable participants impressed Jo Ann Robinson: “There was no other leader there with the humility, with the education, with the know-how of dealing with people who were angry and poor and hungry…. If King had not been prepared to talk with all of them, make all of them feel that they were making a contribution—and they were. Even that man who couldn’t give a straight sentence was letting you know how he felt, and maybe representing the people from his area.”

  Not only did King encourage and inspire the poor and working-class participants; he was encouraged and transformed by their commitment as well. One of his favorite anecdotes from the boycott was about an elderly woman known to the black community as Mother Pollard, who dismissed suggestions by concerned friends and pastors that she go ahead and ride the bus due to her age. In response, she simply replied, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” As he witnessed the resilience of people like Mother Pollard, King was more prepared to make personal sacrifices.25

  Aware that the boycott represented a radical challenge to the status quo in Montgomery, leaders of the Alabama Council on Human Relations (ACHR) got involved, hoping to serve as an intermediary body between the protesters, the city leaders, and the bus company. Local leaders of the ACHR included the council president, Thomas Thrasher, who was pastor of the Church of the Ascension, Montgomery’s largest Episcopalian congregation, and Robert E. Hughes, a Methodist minister who served as the organization’s executive director. An interracial organization, the ACHR had the advantage of relationships with all the local parties involved. They moved to set up a meeting in the hope that a settlement could be reached. There was reason to be pessimistic about the ability of the ACHR to broker an agreement. Follo
wing the Brown v. Board of Education decision, they had tried and failed to bring white and black ministers together to merely discuss the implications of the ruling. While Hughes did not shy away from speaking about racial justice, he was more interested in developing relationships than engaging in debates with staunch segregationists. Together Hughes and Thrasher parlayed their unique positions in the community to arrange a December 8 meeting between the MIA and the city commissioners.26

  The meeting was held at city hall as a dozen MIA leaders met with the city commissioners as well as the local bus manager, J. H. Bagley, and the attorney for Montgomery City Lines, Jack Crenshaw. Crenshaw would not yield, claiming the bus company could not violate a city ordinance to accommodate the protesters’ request. According to King, “the more Crenshaw talked, the more he won the city fathers to his position. Mayor Gayle and Commissioner Sellers became more and more intransigent.” With the meeting going nowhere, the mayor asked a smaller contingent to meet behind closed doors. Again Crenshaw quelled any hope for an agreement, claiming, “If we grant the Negroes these demands they will go about boasting of a victory that they had won over the white people; and this we will not stand for.” As a next step, the MIA sent a letter to the bus company headquarters in Chicago, apprising them of the bus conditions that had led to the boycott. After delineating the three proposals that bus company officials and the city commissioners had denied, they pleaded, “Since 44 % of the city’s population is Negro, and since 75 % of the bus riders are Negro, we urge you to send a representative to Montgomery to arbitrate.” A few days later, MIA leaders issued a press release regarding the rationale for the protest in which they argued that a settlement was possible: “We feel that there is no issue between the Negro citizens and the Montgomery City Lines that cannot be solved by negotiations between people of good will and we submit that there is no legal barrier to such negotiations.” Despite good-faith efforts to further negotiations, both bus and city officials refused to yield to the MIA’s seating proposal.27

  A few of Montgomery’s white citizens supported the boycott, including Hughes, Virginia Durr, and the Trinity Lutheran pastor, Robert Graetz, each of whom assisted with the car pool by driving protesters around the town. Graetz, who served as pastor of a predominantly African American congregation, attended the Holt Street meeting. Impressed by the reasonableness of the MIA demands, he pushed fellow clergy in the white ministerial association to support the boycott’s objectives, but they refused. Inspired by his congregation’s resolve and the just cause of the protest, Graetz decided to join the MIA himself, proving to be the lone white pastor to participate in the organization during the boycott.28

  A week after the boycott began, librarian Juliette Morgan penned a letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. She compared the goals and methods of the protestors to the effective efforts of Gandhi in India a few decades earlier. Impressed by the significance of the event, Morgan wrote: “One feels that history is being made in Montgomery these days, the most important in her career. It is hard to imagine a soul so dead, a heart so hard, a vision so blinded and provincial as not to be moved with admiration at the quiet dignity, discipline, and dedication with which the Negroes have conducted their boycott.” Morgan’s letter affirmed the ill-treatment of African American passengers by some of the bus drivers. Morgan and a few other white citizens in Montgomery were willing to stand up and be counted by supporting the efforts of the protestors.29

  Reverend Graetz attempted to draw greater national publicity to the boycott. In late December, he typed a letter to the news editor of Time magazine in which he called the nascent protest a story “that may be just as explosive as the Till case.” Frustrated with what he deemed to be slanted local coverage by Montgomery’s white media, he urged the magazine to send a reporter to the city so they could “get a good look at the way a one-race press and a one-race police force band together to discredit fifty thousand people who are tired of being treated like animals on the city buses, and who are registering their feelings by refraining from riding those buses.”30

  In the early days of the boycott, Nixon was an essential contributor both in his role as MIA treasurer and as a strategist. While many black professionals did not believe Nixon could effectively serve as leader of the protest, they recognized the critical role he played in making the boycott a reality. Dexter deacon Robert D. Nesbitt Sr. noted, “Mr. Nixon had already been laboring in the community to secure rights for black people and his commitment to the advancement of his race was well known.” After claiming that Nixon could not have effectively led the effort, he quickly added: “He was a dynamic community man. Securing the release of Mrs. Parks and calling the meeting, seizing the moment to initiate a protest, and helping engineer the election of Martin are evidence of his insight.” Rufus Lewis saw things differently, believing Nixon had wanted the prestige of leadership for the movement he had helped engineer: “Mr. Nixon did not initially want Reverend King. The former wanted to be the leader. Nixon was ambitious, but he did not have the force or background necessary to command a large following.” Dexter member Mrs. Thelma Austin Rice stressed Nixon’s significant contributions, however: “The bus boycott was basically Mr. E. D. Nixon’s idea. He made such a claim on several occasions and I believe it. Mr. Nixon had the wherewithal, the tenacity, and commitment needed to make things happen, but lacked the ability to communicate with all people and groups. He had the necessary raw skills. Reverend King brought the refined dimension required.” As Rice suggested, Nixon’s perspective was vital in developing the grassroots nature of the boycott, having earned the trust of working people over the previous two decades. Nixon also brought his union experiences to the table as his organization skills proved invaluable to the MIA. As part of A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nixon understood the opportunities that can materialize when people are organized and united. He also knew how much work would be needed for the effort to last beyond the first few weeks.31

  Soon after the boycott began, the NAACP held a special meeting. King had been on the local board since August and attended the December 13 gathering called by Mr. W. C. Patton, who served as a NAACP field secretary. In notes recorded by Rosa Parks, the local branch commended the MIA for their efforts in the bus protest. The organization sought to work in tandem with the MIA, whose focus would be the local boycott, while the NAACP would press forward with Parks’s legal case. For her part, Parks was willing for the “NAACP to take case to fullest extent of the law.” The organization gave attorney Fred Gray a $100 retainer and named Ralph Abernathy as the chair of the fund-raising efforts to cover anticipated legal expenses.32

  While some were amazed at the cohesiveness and sacrificial efforts of the people of Montgomery, J. E. Pierce believed the leadership in Montgomery had “finally caught up with the masses,” who had “been ready for a long time, but until now they have been without leadership.” For Pierce, the leaders who were finally stepping up were the town’s clergy, for he was well aware of the long-standing efforts of fellow Dexter Social and Political Action Committee members Jo Ann Robinson and Mary Fair Burks to bring substantive change to the city. The leaders who were most ready for this day were Nixon and the women of the WPC. Based on their sacrificial response, the people were also ready. They simply needed local black leaders to move beyond paternalism, recognizing that they could be equal participants in a movement to bring substantive change to their lives. The bus boycott tapped into their willingness to take action.33

  By the dawn of 1956, any hope of a quick end of the boycott had faded. Four weeks into the protest, and with no end in sight, King delivered a sermon at Dexter titled “Our God Is Able.” As would be true numerous times over the coming year, King emphasized God’s power and ability in the face of difficulties. He boldly told his congregation: “The God we worship is not a weak God, He is not an incompetent God and consequently he is able to beat back gigantic mountains of opposition and to bring low prodigious hilltops
of evil.” Despite this theological truth, King admitted that sometimes circumstances lead to “times when each of us is forced to question the ableness of God.” He next turned to evidence of God’s power, noting the intricacies of creation and the ultimate triumph of good over evil: “This is ultimately the hope that keeps us going. Much of my ministry has been given to fighting against social evil. There are times that I get despondent, and wonder if it is worth it. But then something says to me deep down within God is able, you need not worry. So this morning I say to you we must continue to struggle against evil, but don’t worry, God is able.” Thematically similar to “Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” which King had preached the previous summer, on this occasion his words seem stronger, filled with passion. The theological assertion that God is able took on deeper meaning now that King was personally active in the struggle.34

  As King stepped into the pulpit throughout 1956, he was preaching to his congregation while also “ministering to his own spirit.” Throughout the year, as King’s personal involvement in the struggle continued to deepen and intensify, he forged a resilient and hope-filled faith in God in the face of the brutal realities of racism. As James Cone has argued, by participating in the struggle on a daily basis, “King was reintroduced, in a practical manner, to the God of the black experience.” King’s decision to heed Benjamin Mays’s challenge to return to the South had given rise to a spiritual awakening within the young pastor. Through the crucible of the struggle, King remembered and experienced the power and hope Daddy King had been preaching for decades: that “God is able.”35