Becoming King

by Troy Jackson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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