Becoming King (29 page)

King did not exert significant energy in Montgomery to try to silence the critics of the MIA. Instead he devoted the early part of 1958
to the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship, an effort to urge “every Negro in the South to register to vote.” Following an executive meeting of the organization in late January, King offered a list of talking points on the campaign for SCLC speakers and members. The memorandum described the goals of the effort as doubling the number of African American voters in the South while also “liberating all Southerners, Negro and white, to extend democracy in our great nation.” On the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the SCLC launched their voting registration campaign in twenty-one cities throughout the South. In a keynote address for a rally in Miami, King cited the fight for women’s suffrage as an example of the kind of struggle and persistence needed to gain the vote. Determined to make their “intentions crystal clear,” King announced: “We must and we will be free. We want freedom now. We want the right to vote now. We do not want freedom fed to us in teaspoons over another 150 years. Under God we were born free. Misguided men robbed us of our freedom. We want it back, we would keep it forever.”
²⁹

While King continued to travel on behalf of the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship, challenges in Montgomery continued. In March 1958, King responded to E. D. Nixon’s letter from a few months earlier in which he had officially resigned as treasurer of the MIA. In his November letter, Nixon had charged King and Abernathy with not following through on commitments made the previous summer: “You both agreed on some of the points raised by me, and promised to correct them. To date nothing has been done about it.” King’s letter acknowledged Nixon’s resignation and expressed his thanks “for the very fine service you have rendered to the Association since its inception.” King ended the letter acknowledging “the support you have given me all along. Let us continue together in the great struggle ahead.” Dexter deacon Robert D. Nesbitt Sr. later surmised that Nixon left the MIA because he felt he was “lost in the turn of events and receiving too little attention.” While Nixon’s desire for greater publicity played a role in his enmity with King, he was also frustrated with the lack of continuity on the ground in Montgomery. He was concerned that a largely symbolic victory over segregation had overshadowed more significant economic needs in his hometown. Nixon would remain frustrated with the outcomes of the boycott for the rest of his days.
³⁰

Although his relationship with Nixon remained tense, King learned a
great deal from the outspoken Pullman porter. At pivotal moments during the boycott, King listened to Nixon’s voice above all others. It was Nixon who challenged all MIA leaders to have the conviction and fortitude to be publicly identified with the new organization when the boycott began. Inspired by Nixon’s strong words, King immediately agreed. Less than two months later, as the MIA leaders contemplated settling for a compromise with city leaders, Nixon spoke plainly that he would not agree with any attempt to sell out the people. Again King sided with Nixon, noting that the people are “willing to walk,” and any compromise would not reflect the desires of the community. King also learned how to try to work with an internal critic who disagreed with aspects of his leadership. Nixon was not the last outspoken idealist who would both challenge and frustrate King. In future years, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, and Stokely Carmichael would offer similar challenges. King’s experiences with Nixon helped prepare him for future internal conflicts. Nixon exemplified the type of tireless sacrifice necessary in the struggle for racial justice.

Before the dawn of the boycott, Nixon had devoted countless hours to the NAACP. One of the organization’s major concerns had been the conviction and death sentence of Jeremiah Reeves, who in 1952 was indicted and found guilty of raping a white woman. Still in high school at the time of his arrest, Reeves had confessed to the rape under police interrogation, though his defense attorneys later claimed his confession had been unjustly coerced. Many African Americans in Montgomery held that the white housewife and Reeves were having an affair. When discovered, the woman claimed she had been raped. On March 28, 1958, Jeremiah Reeves was executed at Kilby State Prison. Following the execution, King joined around two thousand people in a prayer pilgrimage to the Alabama Capitol to protest the state’s action. He addressed the crowd, claiming the gathering was “an act of public repentance for our community for committing a tragic and unsavory injustice.” Acknowledging that they did not know definitively whether Reeves was guilty or innocent of the charges, King questioned “the severity and inequality of the penalty” he received, noting “full grown white men committing comparable crimes against Negro girls are rare ever [sic] punished, and are never given the death penalty or even a life sentence.” King took the opportunity to challenge the pattern of injustice perpetuated by the court
system: “Negroes are robbed openly with little hope of redress. We are fined and jailed often in defiance of law. Right or wrong, a Negro’s word has little weight against a white opponent.” A few days later, a group of three hundred white clergy and church leaders in the community issued a statement denouncing the Easter demonstration, suggesting that instead local African American leaders should participate in organized dialogue with white leaders. When King and the MIA asked for a meeting to begin such discussions, they received no reply.
³¹

King continued to take advantage of opportunities to speak on the national stage. In 1957, he began writing answers to readers’ questions in a column titled “Advice for Living” published in
Ebony
magazine. He also participated along with other African American leaders in a meeting with President Eisenhower on June 23, 1958. Following the meeting, King joined A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Lester B. Granger of the Urban League, and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP in crafting a statement to President Eisenhower. They urged the president to ensure national law would be enforced throughout the land, sought a White House conference to deal with the integration rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, and pleaded for full protection for those seeking to register to vote.
³²

A few months after meeting with President Eisenhower, Montgomery police once again arrested King. He was charged with loitering as police claimed King failed to cooperate with a request to “move on” as he tried to gain entrance to the trial of Edward Davis, a man who had attacked Ralph Abernathy the previous week. King countered by accusing the officers of using unnecessary force including trying to break his arm, choking him, and kicking him once he got to his cell. The court found King guilty of loitering and fined him ten dollars in addition to four dollars for court fees. Following his conviction, King informed the judge that he “could not in all good conscience pay a fine for an act that I did not commit.” Instead he agreed to “accept the alternative which you provide, and that I will do without malice.” Although King intended to serve time in jail, the Montgomery police commissioner, Clyde Sellers, paid the fine in order to avoid further negative publicity for his city.
³³

A few days after the trial, King received a letter from Nixon. While Nixon thought King had been foolish to take the chance of allowing
the police an opportunity to assault him “behind closed doors,” he applauded the decision to serve time rather than pay a fine, calling it “the most courageous stand in that direction since Bayard Rustin, serve time [sic] in Carolina. And because of your courage in face of known danger I want to commend you for your stand for the people of color all over the world, and especially the people in Montgomery.” King thanked Nixon for his letter a few days later, noting: “I am sorry that I have not seen you in a long, long time. I hope our paths will cross in the not-too-distant future.”
³⁴

Nixon’s letter to King demonstrates the competing agendas that added to the difficulties for the Montgomery struggle following the boycott. King had stressed that the struggle was “bigger than Montgomery,” and Reddick claimed that the local movement’s effectiveness was demonstrated primarily through its “positive national and international effect, far more significant than any local effects.” In contrast, while Nixon acknowledged the global dimension of King’s willingness to go to jail to confront injustice, he was “especially” pleased that King had stood for “the people in Montgomery.” As King, Abernathy, and Reddick concentrated on building a regional civil rights movement, Nixon’s heart remained first and foremost with the people of his city. Nixon longed for a return to a civil rights struggle defined by the plight of Montgomery’s African American citizens and fortified by the courageous action of local people. King’s attention was elsewhere.
³⁵

In the summer of 1958, the few whites working for racial change in Montgomery continued to experience significant backlash for their support of integration. Some simply decided to leave town. Robert Graetz, the only white clergyman in the MIA, accepted a call to pastor a Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio. Soon after, the interracial woman’s group called the Fellowship of the Concerned decided to hold a daylong meeting at the Father Purcell Unit of St. Jude’s Hospital. Someone got wind of the meeting and proceeded to go through the hospital parking lot writing down the license plate numbers of those in attendance. They used this information to get the phone numbers of those affiliated with the Fellowship of the Concerned. Threatening and harassing phone calls soon followed, and participants’ names appeared in a segregationist paper called the
Montgomery Home News.
Olive Andrews recalled:
“They didn’t publish names of black women at all but they published names of white women and their addresses and their telephone numbers. They gave the husbands’ names and their business addresses and their telephone numbers.”
³⁶

Andrews later reflected that the fallout from the meeting at St. Jude’s was the first time she felt serious opposition in Montgomery to her organization. She speculated that the reason for the turmoil was that the group had elected to meet in space provided by a white institution. She had been excited about the event and had mailed out hundreds of invitations throughout the area, inadvertently alerting somebody at the post office that the interracial event was taking place. They violated a sacred southern taboo that day by eating together. They shared carry-out boxed lunches because no restaurant in Montgomery would have served them. Some of those harassing the Fellowship of the Concerned made a flier they put on windshields throughout Montgomery telling about a meeting at St. Jude’s where “nigger men and nigger women” ate together with whites.
³⁷

Despite the repressive atmosphere perpetuated by many white churchgoers in Montgomery, King continued to believe the church had the opportunity to be an incredible beacon for peace and justice. He attributed some of the hypocrisy found in people who attend church while failing to be advocates for justice to the types of sermons preached in many churches. Instead of addressing deep spiritual needs, some clergy offered messages filled with positive thinking and plans for personal achievement. In a sermon titled “A Knock at Midnight” delivered in Chicago, King bemoaned the church’s failure: “Hundreds and thousands of men and women in quest for the bread of social justice are going to the church only to be disappointed.” King challenged the church to provide the bread of faith, hope, and love to a desperate world.
³⁸

In the fall of 1958, Harper and Brothers published
Stride toward Freedom,
King’s memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott. In conjunction with the release, King embarked on a publicity tour that included several days in New York City. During a book signing appearance at a Harlem bookstore, a mentally unstable woman named Izola Curry stabbed King. While the wound did not prove fatal, he was hospitalized for several days. The stabbing forced King to adopt a slower pace for several weeks while
he recovered at the home of pastor and family friend Sandy Ray in Brooklyn. When he finally returned to Montgomery over a month later, he was greeted warmly by a large crowd at the airport. In his remarks to those gathered, King announced: “I have come back, not only because this is my home, not only because my family is here, not only because you are my friends whom I love. I have come back to rejoin the ranks of you who are working ceaselessly for the realization of the ideal of Freedom and Justice for all men.” Reflecting on the outpouring of goodwill he had received after the stabbing, King surmised that “this affection was not for me alone. Indeed it was far too much for any one man to deserve. It was really for you. It was an expression of the fact that the Montgomery Story had moved the hearts of men everywhere. Through me, the many thousands of people who wrote of their admiration, were really writing of their love for you.”
³⁹

The stir caused by
Stride toward Freedom
in Montgomery was not all related to King’s subsequent stabbing. According to Dexter member Thelma Rice, tempers flew when the book came out: “Some people felt they were left out of the publication and their contributions to the struggle diminished or overlooked.” Others believed the book failed to properly credit the labors that took place in Montgomery before King’s arrival on the scene. Many of the fractures in the town’s African American community that Trezzvant Anderson highlighted in his
Pittsburgh Courier
articles were further exacerbated by the appearance of King’s book.
⁴⁰

The stabbing forced King to delay his annual report to Dexter by several weeks. When he finally submitted his chronicle of the previous ministry year, he thanked his congregation for their ongoing support and encouragement. Calling the year “rather difficult” personally, he noted that he faced “the brutality of police officers, an unwarranted arrest, and a near fatal stab wound” that had affected him greatly. Dexter remained supportive through “thoughtful, considerate gestures of goodwill” that helped provide King “the courage and strength to face the ordeals of that trying period.”
⁴¹