Becoming King (33 page)

^4.
For a detailed history of Maxwell Air Force Base, see Ennels and Newton,
The Wisdom of Eagles.
Taylor Branch asserts that Maxwell and nearby Gunter Air Force bases contributed almost $50 million a year to the local economy (Branch,
Parting the Waters,
13).

^5.
Thornton,
Dividing Lines,
23. For a thorough exploration of the significant political shifts in Montgomery during the decade prior to the boycott, including the election of Dave Birmingham, see ibid., 20–40.

^6.
Abernathy, “The Natural History of a Social Movement,” in Garrow, ed.,
The Walking City,
109; Preston Valien, “The Montgomery Bus Protest as a Social Movement,” ibid., 94; Steven Milner, “The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A Case Study in the Emergence of a Social Movement,” ibid., 433.

^7.
Kathy Dunn Jackson, “You Can Go Home Again,” in Westhauser, Smith, and Fremlin, eds.,
Creating Community,
19–20.

^8.
Alabama Tribune,
September 19, 1952; Thornton,
Dividing Lines,
38.

^9.
Thornton,
Dividing Lines,
33–35.

^10.
Garrow, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 21; Thornton, Dividing Lines, 35.

^11.
For a thorough discussion regarding the founding and history of Tuskegee Institute, see Norrell,
Reaping the Whirlwind;
and Harlan,
Booker T. Washington.
Portia Trenholm, “Memoirs,” 2. Trenholm claims that during the 1930s, “the buying power of Tuskegee instructors was higher than” that of teachers at Alabama State Teachers College in Montgomery.

^12.
Rogers, Ward, Atkins, and Flynt,
Alabama: The History of a Deep South State,
329; Juan Williams and Ashley,
I’ll Find a Way or Make One,
312–13; Jo Ann Robinson to H. Councill Trenholm, August 3, 1950, H. Councill Trenholm Papers.

^13.
Roberson,
Fighting the Good Fight,
21, 56; Virginia Durr to Clark and Mairi Foreman, February 26, 1953, in Sullivan, ed.,
Freedom Writer,
47. Montgomery’s NAACP chapter was not alone in its middle-class orientation. According to Manford Berg in his recent study of the NAACP, the years immediately following World War II saw a vast increase in working-class memberships, a period that corresponds with when E. D. Nixon was president of his local and state chapters. Despite this surge, Berg admits that “the local leaders continued to be male and middle-class.” The spike in membership nationally was short-lived, with a 1946 high-water mark of roughly 540,000 members decreasing to 350,000 in 1948, and falling to 150,000 in 1950 (Berg,
“The Ticket to Freedom,”
109–11).

^14.
E. D. Nixon to Walter White, December 14, 1944, Group II, Box C-4, Montgomery Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Papers, 1940–1954, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Hereafter cited as Montgomery NAACP Papers.

^15.
Rosa Parks to Ella Baker, May 2, 1945, Donald Jones to Ella Baker, 1945, Montgomery NAACP Papers.

^16.
E. D. Nixon to W. G. Porter, 1945, W. G. Porter to Ella Baker, December 1945, Montgomery NAACP Papers; Parks, with Haskins,
Rosa Parks, My Story,
80–95.

^17.
Brinkley,
Rosa Parks,
48, 71.

^18.
The Citizens Overall Committee letterhead used in 1944 lists most major African American organizations in Montgomery as members. The presidents and leaders of the NAACP, the Negro Civic League, and the City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs were joined by President Trenholm of Alabama State Teachers College, several prominent businessmen, teachers, and ministers, as well as local newspaper editors in serving as members of the Citizens Overall Committee. The particular correspondence concerned the need to upgrade “the condition of the Ladies rest room in the Colored Waiting Room in the Union Station.” Nixon also drew attention to the filth of the wash basin and the unsanitary state of the drinking water provided (E. D. Nixon to the President of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, February 7, 1944, Box 27, Nixon Collection; Nixon, interview by Lumpkin).

^19.
Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 27; Alabama Tribune, December 5, 1952.

^20.
Nixon, interview by Lumpkin; Warlick, “‘Man of the Year’ for ‘54,” 27; Donald Jones to Ella Baker, 1945, Ella Baker to E. D. Nixon, January 21, 1946, Montgomery NAACP Papers; Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton,
The Children Coming On,
225.

^21.
Charles G. Gomillion was the dean of students and a sociology professor
at Tuskegee Institute. He was involved in the leadership of the local NAACP chapter and in the Tuskegee Civic Association. In 1957, the Alabama state senator Sam Englehardt Jr. sponsored a successful bill before the state legislature that redrew the boundaries of Tuskegee in an attempt to nullify the black vote in the community. In response, Gomillion led a boycott of Tuskegee’s white merchants. With Fred Gray as their attorney, they filed suit against the Alabama legislature’s ruling. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court found for the plaintiffs in a case known as
Gomillion vs. Lightfoot
(Robert E. Hughes, Alabama Council on Human Relations newsletter [January 1958], Fellowship of Reconciliation Papers; Gray,
Bus Ride to Justice,
112–24). The 1946 election was the first Alabama Democratic primary in the twentieth century in which blacks could legally vote. In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled white primaries unconstitutional (Thornton,
Dividing Lines,
27). Turnipseed, interview by Durr.

^22.
Egerton,
Speak Now against the Day,
101, 321, 464.

^23.
Gould Beech and Mary Beech, interview by Durr.

^24.
Virginia Durr to Otto Nathan, August 29, 1951, in Sullivan, ed.,
Freedom Writer,
35–36.

^25.
Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, 241–47.

^26.
Montgomery Advertiser, June 9, 1952.

^27.
The Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF) grew out of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), an organization formed during the New Deal era in an effort to mobilize a liberal coalition in the South. Founded in 1946, when the SCHW began to focus on political lobbying, the SCEF was a tax-exempt organization focused primarily on challenging racial discrimination in the South through the dissemination of information (Egerton,
Speak Now against the Day,
441, 529–30). Dombrowski to Morgan, June 19, 1952, Morgan to Dombrowski, July 8, 1952, Morgan Papers; Clifford and Virginia Durr, interview by Lumpkin.

^28.
Andrews, interview by Durr.

^29.
Ibid.

^30.
Clifford and Virginia Durr, interview by Lumpkin; Nixon, interview by Lumpkin.

^31.
For a thorough description of the founding of both Columbus Avenue Baptist Church (First Baptist Church) and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, see Roberson,
Fighting the Good Fight,
1–23.

^32.
Branch,
Parting the Waters,
1–5, 107.

^33.
Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 23–50.

^34.
Vaughn and Wills, eds.,
Reflections on Our Pastor,
6.

^35.
Pierce, interview by Lumpkin.

^36.
Ibid. Pierce characterized Johns as a “rough, knock-down, drag-out” type of person who was “a very militant guy.” While Pierce admitted that “Johns pulverized the soil and planted the seed” for the Montgomery movement, he characterized him as “too brusque,” which prevented him from galvanizing the people of Dexter and the broader community. Zelia Evans and J. T. Alexander, in their history of Dexter, add: “One sermon preached during his pastorate was entitled, ‘It’s safe to Murder Negroes in Alabama.’ Its announcement on the bulletin board landed him before a grand jury which tried to prevent him from preaching it. Neither the grand jury nor the Klu [sic] Klux Klan cross that was burned the day of the sermon kept him from delivering his planned discourse” (Evans and Alexander, eds.,
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,
64).

^37.
Pierce, interview by Lumpkin; Lewis and Ligon, interview by Lumpkin; Evans and Alexander, eds.,
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 1877–1977,
64. Lewis Baldwin credits Johns for paving the way, noting King’s “success in bringing the Dexter Avenue Church to the forefront of the struggle owed much to the contributions and inspiration of persons who preceded him in Montgomery. One such person was Vernon Johns, the imposing, scholarly, and controversial figure who was King’s immediate predecessor at the Dexter Avenue Church” (Baldwin,
There Is a Balm in Gilead,
183).

^38.
Gray, interview by Lumpkin. These outside perspectives on Dexter may be a bit simplistic. According to the member Thelma Rice, the congregation “was a mixed church across the board. There were those who were domestics, there were those who were skilled workers, there were those who were in the educational field. There were the professionals, but there was a mixture.” While Rice may be overstating her case, given the small percentage of middle-class blacks in the city, the congregation undoubtedly did include some from the working class (Rice, interview by Lumpkin).

^39.
Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds.,
Women in the Civil Rights Movement,
76, 78.

^40.
D. Williams, with Greenhaw,
The Thunder of Angels,
81; Elaine M. Smith, “Living A Womanist Legacy,” in Westhauser, Smith, and Fremlin, eds.,
Creating Community,
74–75.

^41.
While Burks and Jo Ann Robinson claim the organization was founded in 1946 and that Robinson became president in 1950, both dates are incorrect. Burks’s contention that she was inspired by a Vernon Johns sermon eliminates the possibility that the group was founded in 1946, as Johns did not become Dexter’s pastor until 1947. Additionally, in 1953 Mary Fair Burks composed a letter to the editor of the
Montgomery Advertiser
that
she signed, “Mary Fair Burks, President, Negro Women’s Political Council”
(Montgomery Advertiser,
April 21, 1953). J. Mills Thornton claims the WPC emerged after local black women were excluded from the newly formed Montgomery League of Women Voters, which began in December 1947. When national leaders of the League of Women Voters refused to charter a black chapter in the city, the WPC was born (see Thornton,
Dividing Lines,
32, 78, 590n23). While this broader consideration explains the need for an independent organization, Burks’s story fleshes out the specific events that sparked the timing of the WPC, which started closer to 1949 than 1946.

^42.
Thelma Glass notes the scope of the organization’s vision: “We had two very strong chapters going, but the whole idea was to have a political council in each area of Montgomery. Four, I think, was in the original plan: east, west, north and south, with its own membership and what not” (Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton,
The Children Coming On,
131). Ibid., 229.

^43.
Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 15–16.

^44.
Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 75; Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 22.

^45.
Burns, ed., Daybreak of Freedom, 59–61; Thornton, Dividing Lines,
46.

^46.
Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton, The Children Coming On, 130, 228–29; Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 28.

^47.
Vaughn and Wills, eds.,
Reflections on Our Pastor,
14–16.

^48.
Rice, interview by Lumpkin; Evans and Alexander, eds.,
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church 1877–1977,
64. See also Roberson,
Fighting the Good Fight,
100–101.

^49.
Vaughn and Wills, eds.,
Reflections on Our Pastor,
6, 45.

^50.
Branch, Parting the Waters, 11; Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 105–6.

^51.
Montgomery Advertiser,
November 11, 1952. The front-page story claimed Reeves confessed to robbing and assaulting Prescott, but he denied raping her, and the chief deputy sheriff, George Mosley, said that medical examiners concluded “the woman definitely was not raped.” Authorities eventually charged Reeves with assaulting six white women over the previous sixteen months. Prescott later claimed that Reeves had tried to rape her. A story by Joe Azbell noted “some 150 Negroes were quizzed by policemen in the 16 month investigation”
(Montgomery Advertiser,
November 13, 1952).
When Reeves took the stand in his trial, he “repudiated six confessions allegedly made to investigating officers”
(Montgomery Advertiser,
November 29, 1952). The jury reached a guilty verdict in thirty-eight minutes, and Reeves was sentenced to death
(Montgomery Advertiser,
November 30, 1952; December 4, 5, 1952). Burns,
To the Mountaintop,
1.

^52.
Vaughn and Wills, eds.,
Reflections on Our Pastor,
25.

^1.
King to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952, in
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 123–26.

^2.
The change of names from Michael to Martin for both father and son appears to have taken place gradually during the mid-1930s. See
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
1: 31; and King Sr., with Riley,
Daddy King: An Autobiography,
26. Martin Luther King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
1: 361. Much of the historiography of the past few decades has corrected earlier works that overemphasized the white liberal theological roots of King’s intellectual development. Lewis Baldwin’s
There Is a Balm in Gilead
highlights the black southern roots of King’s thought: “The black experience and the black Christian tradition were the most important sources in the shaping of King’s life, thought, vision, and efforts to translate the ethical ideal of the beloved community into practical reality” (2). Baldwin notes that previous works, such as Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp’s
The Search for the Beloved Community
and John Ansbro’s
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
represent “a narrow, elitist, and racist approach that assumes that the black church and the larger black community are not healthy and vital contexts for the origin of intellectual ideas regarding theology and social change. The consequence of that approach has been to abstract King’s intellectual development from his social and religious roots—family, church, and the larger black community—and to treat it primarily as a product of white Western philosophy and theology” (3). Other scholars have made similar arguments regarding the primacy of Atlanta, King’s family, and Ebenezer in King’s development, including Cone,
Martin and Malcolm and America;
Miller,
Voice of Deliverance;
Lischer,
The Preacher King;
and Dyson,
I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.