Becoming King (19 page)

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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The people of Montgomery also sharpened King’s faith and understanding. Early in the boycott, King had a conversation with Myles Horton, who ran the Highlander Folk School. King asked him for any advice he might lend, to which Horton replied: “draw your strength from the people. You are not going to get it from any kind of ideology. That is fine to have. We all need it and I am all for it, but practically speaking you’ve got to listen to the people and learn to respond to their feelings and needs and be intuitive.” Horton believed King followed his advice and indeed drew “his strength from the people.”
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Among the people King leaned on most were Robinson and Burks, who wielded great influence during the early months of the protest. According to Erna Dungee Allen, who served as the secretary of the WPC, the women “were kind of like the power behind the throne. We really were the ones who carried out the actions.” Allen also asserted: “When all the dust settled the women were there when it cleared. They were there in positions to hold the thing [MIA] together. We took the position that if anything comes up, all you have to do is whistle and the men will be there. They’d come. But the little day-to-day things, taking care of the finances, things like that, the women still take care of that.” In Allen’s view, King benefited from the committed people around him, men and women alike: “He listened a lot and he thought a lot. He got by himself a lot. But he had a lot of help from the other men. And they exchanged ideas and he accepted ideas. And they usually came up with a good decision out of all of the exchanging of ideas.” While King may have had the responsibility of making final decisions and communicating those to the people, in the early days of the boycott King benefited from the collective wisdom, passion, and ideas of the gifted people around him.
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No one played a greater role than Robinson. Less than two months into the boycott, the Fisk researcher Donald Ferron wrote: “I sense that in addition to Reverend King, there is another leader, though unknown to the public, of perhaps equal significance. The public recognized King as the leader, but I wonder if Mrs. Robinson may be of equal importance.” King later described Robinson as “indefatigable” and as a person
who “was active on every level of the protest. She took part in both the executive board and the strategy committee meetings. When the MIA newsletter was inaugurated a few months after the protest began, she became its editor. She was sure to be present whenever negotiations were in progress. And although she carried a full teaching load at Alabama State, she still found time to drive both morning and afternoon.”
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Not all was harmonious inside the leadership of the MIA, however. In an early January edition of the
Montgomery Advertiser,
an editorial appeared by MIA secretary Uriah Fields. He used strong language throughout, arguing: “On our side there can be no compromise with this principle involved. In the first place this is a compromise to begin with. We should have demanded complete integration which does away with Jim Crow, and what our constitutional rights guarantee to all American citizens.” Raising the stakes even higher, Fields concluded: “We shall never cease our struggle for equality until we gain first-class citizenship, and take it from me this is from a reliable source of Negro citizens of Montgomery. We have no intention of compromising. Such unwarranted delay in granting our request may very well result in a demand for the annihilation of segregation which will result in complete integration.” While Fields’s words may have represented the true sentiments of the majority of Montgomery’s African American citizenry and the leaders of the MIA, the leadership did not want their views broadcast in the local media. Fields had sent in the editorial without informing the rest of the MIA leadership. King and other leaders were angry with Fields, whose words served to heighten the vitriolic rhetoric between the parties and blunted the claim of the protesters that they were not seeking an end to segregation. A few weeks later, at an executive board meeting, the decision was made to curtail any such letters in the future: “The President at his discretion may make releases to the press. All other releases must be approved by the exec. comm., and such releases must be in writing with the newspaper having a copy and copy (duplicate) kept by the committee as a protective measure.” This would not be the last time Fields’s comments caused a crisis for the MIA and headaches for King.
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In an effort to clarify their position, the MIA and a group of African American pastors wrote a letter to Montgomery officials. They reiterated that their boycott was in part a response to “the present seating arrangement,”
though they added that it was “not a request for the abolition of segregation on buses but for a fair and reasonable seating of passengers so as to assure all passengers equal treatment.” The mayor and city commissioners refused to budge, citing their commitment to uphold city and state law.
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Despite the internal controversy, the
Alabama Tribune
editorial director, Emory Jackson, remained impressed by the boycott as it entered its sixth week. He stressed not only the unity of the people and the quality of leadership, but also the economic benefit the protest yielded for the community’s African American citizens, noting Montgomery “has demonstrated the power of mobilized purchasing power” and that “the dollar can be made to perform a double duty in a democracy.” Instead of patronizing city buses, blacks hired carpool drivers and purchased gas from black-owned service stations. The boycott of buses also meant most African Americans had less time, opportunity, and inclination to patronize downtown Montgomery’s predominantly white-owned businesses.
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The bus boycott galvanized the African American community around a common protest, but that was not all that bound the people together. As Jackson’s editorial suggests, one consequence of the boycott was the establishing of a parallel black economy in the city. Instead of spending their dollars in white-owned businesses downtown, African Americans increasingly depended upon one another, creating new business and job opportunities. While the working class bore the brunt of the protest by not riding city buses, some did benefit from the broader galvanizing of the black community surrounding the boycott. Not only were some new jobs created, such as driving vehicles for the car pools, but numerous relationships were forged across class lines. The economic dimensions of the boycott must have particularly pleased Nixon, who not only longed for symbolic victories to challenge segregation, but who also desired substantive changes in the daily lives for all of Montgomery’s black citizens.

As he tried to respond to the controversy caused by the Fields editorial, King delivered a sermon titled “How to Believe in a Good God in the Midst of Glaring Evil.” Among King’s responses to the problem of evil was his assertion that “disbelief in a good God presents more problems than it solves. It is difficult to explain the presence of evil in the world of a good God, but it is more difficult to explain the presence of good in
a world of no God.” The sermon contained no easy answers. His philosophical responses seem hollow given the challenges facing both he and his congregation. Perhaps they knew no high-minded theological treatise could substitute for the daily experience of God’s presence, even in the midst of glaring evil. King and his congregation would lean on their faith often over the coming weeks.
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As January dragged on, the ACHR director, Robert Hughes, still hoped some type of settlement could be brokered. Though Hughes privately believed the demands of the protest were legitimate, his role with the ACHR limited how much he could say publicly. He did not believe a boycott was the most constructive approach to solving the problem, noting it “is too much like the way the citizens’ council work.” Hughes clarified his distaste for the protest: “I think it is wrong to take measures that deprive people of their livelihood, that you should work things out in some way that will not cut off a man’s income because he feels differently than you do.” Hughes hinted at an underground effort of those who want to try to solve the boycott that was scheduled for January 20, but when pressed on the details, he was sketchy and evasive. Like many other liberal whites in Montgomery, Hughes affirmed the injustice of the current conditions but did not endorse the means by which the MIA chose to challenge the injustice. In the guise of being part of a bridge organization between whites and blacks, he evaded taking a clear public stand on any of the principles involved.
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On January 20, the ACHR held their monthly meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Around forty people attended to hear a discussion of the pastor’s role in race relations. Panel members included Reverend E. Tipton Carroll of Cloverdale Christian Church, Dr. Crockett of Alabama State College, and Reverend Thomas R. Thrasher of the Church of the Ascension. King was originally scheduled to be on the panel but was out of town. In notes taken at the meeting, the Fisk University researcher Anna Holden commented that each of the respondents believed there were times when one should risk one’s position to take a stand, and they all admitted a reluctance to do so. In the question-and-answer period, Clara Rutledge recommended a recent
Reader’s Digest
article to the group titled “The Churches Repent,” which examined the outcome for some churches that chose to integrate. At the close of the meeting,
Hughes asked for prayer for Reverend Robert Graetz, who had received many threats. Among those present at the meeting were Fred Gray and Coretta King.
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In a surprising development, the
Montgomery Advertiser
announced on January 22 that city officials had reached a settlement of the bus boycott with some prominent African American leaders. There had been a meeting with three relatively obscure black pastors who were not a part of the MIA in which they agreed to what King called “conditions that had existed prior to the boycott.” The MIA moved quickly to refute the story, calling local clergy late at night to ensure they would let their congregants know during their worship services the following morning that the boycott was still on. Recognizing that many would not be in church the next day, King joined a group who visited African American nightclubs and pool halls until one o’clock in the morning to let them know that any rumors of a settlement were false. Reflecting on his long night, King noted, “For the first time I had a chance to see the inside of most of Montgomery’s night spots.” The fraudulent settlement ended up backfiring on city leaders as King and others reinforced ties with the broader black community through their late-night crusade through taverns and bars. The boycotters responded angrily to the purported agreement, serving notice to all that they were not interested in any outcome based on promises of possible future changes. MIA leaders also issued a press release in which they argued that any ministers who did meet with city officials “do not represent even a modicum of the Negro bus riders.” Claiming that more than 99 percent of the city’s black community supported the boycott, they emphasized that “the bus protest is still on and it will last until our proposals are given sympathetic consideration through our appointed leaders.”
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