Becoming King (24 page)

As the boycott entered its sixth month, King and other MIA officials recognized that the battle in Montgomery was more of a distance race than a sprint. King offered suggestions to the MIA board regarding how to better pace themselves for the long haul. Among his recommendations was a reduction of mass meetings down to one each week and limiting this Monday evening gathering to ninety minutes. He also stressed the need to increase the political voice of African Americans in Montgomery through voting and voter registration. He announced that Jo Ann Robinson would edit a bimonthly newsletter to keep people better informed
of MIA developments. Additionally, King advocated a plan to increase their “economic power through the establishment of a bank,” appointing a committee to apply for a charter in the near future.
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The concern for greater economic power had been a part of the agenda of the boycott since its inception. One of the original demands of the boycotters was that Montgomery City Lines hire black drivers to drive on largely African American routes. This condition set by the MIA reflected a felt need among the community for greater economic opportunities. All indications are that the boycott provided a boon to the black economy in Montgomery. Rufus Lewis, who led the transportation efforts for a period, claimed that black businesses were aided: “We buy all our gas from eight Negro filling stations. There is an appeal in mass meetings to trade with Negroes. This whole thing has brought about closer cooperation between Negroes.” In an article, King sounded a similar note: “We have observed that small Negro shops are thriving as Negroes find it inconvenient to walk downtown to the white stores,” concluding, “we have a new respect for the proper use of our dollar.” As summer approached, an end to the bus boycott was nowhere in sight, but the protest had brought an unexpected economic boost to Montgomery’s black citizens.
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Although the economic effects warrant attention, many argued the greatest significance of the boycott was how it united the African American community in Montgomery. Later accounts typically describe this as a time when a previously divided people came together for a common cause. While the car pools provided a degree of independence from the white economy, the car rides also served as a powerful time for boycott participants to share stories and build community. Many drivers saw their task as far more than transporting people from one place to another. They attempted to lighten the mood, some with jokes and stories about whites that gave some respite from the daily grind. Drivers frequently reminded passengers of the power of God, turning their seat into a pulpit for the duration of the trip. They saw their time in the car pool as crucial to keeping the people united, encouraged, and confident. Jo Ann Robinson noted that by the time folks reached their destination, “they were laughing as if that mood of faith had been with them all day.” As many of the drivers represented Montgomery’s professionals, and many of the riders were from the working class, the car pools served to provide greater unity
among the classes. Robinson even believed “the line between the higher class and the proletariat has broken down—‘We are in this thing together’ is the spirit on both levels.”
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The regular mass meetings also provided an opportunity for the community to come together, leading many to view these gatherings as the heartbeat of the movement. The services also allowed boycott leaders, including many of the city’s preachers, to play a more public role in the movement. They became a place where the professional classes could join maids and day laborers in a common cause. One veteran pastor who had already earned the respect of many in the city prior to the boycott was Reverend Solomon Seay. King later called him “one of the few clerical voices that, in the years preceding the protest, had lashed out against the injustices heaped on the Negro, and urged his people to a greater appreciation of their own worth.” King noted his speeches “raised the spirits of all who heard him.” Seay himself viewed the movement as primarily spiritual, with Christianity providing “a common ground upon which everyone could stand.” In Seay’s mind, the unifying effect of the boycott was best understood “as the work and purpose of God being fulfilled at the historical moment in American history.”
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Mass meetings would become one of the defining forms of the civil rights movement. Boycott participant Alfreida Dean Thomas credited the gatherings for helping her feel “for the first time that here were people who had been separated just on really fictitious reasons but were now together in oneness of purpose. This alone was enough to make a good feeling.” King claimed the attendance at mass meetings included both professionals and the working class: “The vast majority present were working people; yet there was always an appreciable number of professionals in the audience.” He went on to claim that “the so-called ‘big Negroes’ who owned cars and had never ridden the buses came to know the maids and laborers who rode the buses every day. Men and women who had been separated from each other by false standards of class were now singing and praying together in a common struggle for freedom and human dignity.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 highlighting 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.”
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