The Serendipity of History

My Black History month continues…

Part II: The Serendipity of History

History doesn’t allow re-dos, so we’ll never know whether without Rosa Parks there would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.  It’s certainly plausible. In any case the solitary protest of the former and the emergence of the latter are forever intertwined.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks on Thursday, December 1, 1955 events moved quickly. Today we would say things went viral.

From the police station on Thursday evening Rosa called her mother, whose first words “Did they beat you?” reflect African-American’s then near-universal fear of the criminal justice system in the South. Her mother called the home of E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP and de facto point man for the Montgomery black community. She spoke to Nixon’s wife, who called her husband and pretty much ordered him to find out what happened to Rosa Parks and fix it.

E.D. Nixon reached out to Clifford Durr, the white attorney who had sponsored Rosa’s trip to the Highlander Folk School, and together they went to the police station to bail out Rosa Parks. Both men, and likely Rosa herself, recognized the possibilities of fighting her arrest in the federal court system. In terms of reputation and personal integrity, she was the perfect plaintiff.

Rosa told Nixon and Durr that she needed to consult with her family.  Elevating her case, which otherwise would likely result in a small fine, risked all kinds of unknown repercussions. Her husband Raymond, expressing these fears, said to his wife, “The white folks will kill you, Rosa.” Nevertheless, she agreed to do it, telling Nixon and Durr that she trusted that it would “do some good.”

At this point the story might have followed the pattern of Brown v Board of Education: Rosa’s legal appeal wending its way up the judicial chain of command to arrive, ultimately, at the Supreme Court. But word of Rosa Park’s arrest reached Jo Ann Robinson, an English professor at near-by Alabama State College and the president of the Women’s Political Council, a local African American civic group. Robinson had a plan and she grasped the opportunity presented by Rosa Park’s arrest to execute it. Working surreptitiously through the night at her Alabama State office, she drafted and printed a flyer advocating a one-day boycott of the Montgomery City buses. 

“Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”

In the early hours of Friday morning, which is to say the middle of the night, Jo Ann Robinson called E.D. Nixon to tell him her plan for a bus boycott and seek his approval. He gave it immediately.

[There is some controversy as to who came up with the idea for a boycott. Nixon later claimed he did, or at least did independently of Robinson. In any case he readily gave the plan his full support.]

Montgomery is the second largest city in Alabama and its capital. In 1955 its population was about 134,000, of which one-third was African American. Thus, the proposed one-day boycott would affect approximately 36,000 African Americans who then comprised 75% of city bus riders.

Nixon knew that any plan for mass protest needed the support of the African American clergy, both to give it moral authority and get the word out. Early on Friday morning he started making phone calls. One went to the relatively new minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr. Would King endorse a one-day boycott? And, either way, could Nixon use Dexter Avenue Baptist for a meeting later that day? King immediately consented to the meeting. He asked for time to consider the boycott.

When I listen today to the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I think most Americans know him best by his recorded speeches, I conceive a man older than he was. At the moment he took the phone call from E.D. Nixon, he had just turned 26 years old. A year earlier King had taken the pastoral reins at Dexter Avenue Baptist, described by Taylor Branch as an unusually fractious congregation which chewed pastors up and spit them out a few years later. His first child was two weeks old. He was finishing his doctoral dissertation at Boston University. His life was full to the point of overflowing. Still, he had joined the NAACP and soon thereafter was appointed to the local chapter’s executive committee. 

On Friday afternoon fifty or so black leaders, many of whom were pastors, met at Dexter Avenue Baptist. E.D. Nixon was missing. His job as a Pullman car porter would keep him out of town until Sunday. By then M.L. King had agreed to support the boycott. The meeting, described as somewhat chaotic, endorsed the Robinson-Nixon plan. The various pastors agreed to spread the word at Sunday services. A sub-committee printed another flyer with the addition: “Come to a mass meeting Monday at 7 PM, at the Holt Street Baptist Church for more information.” 

Holt Street Baptist Church

Holt Street Baptist was the largest black church in the city and so was the logical place for a mass meeting. However, no one knew at this point whether Montgomery blacks would honor the boycott on Monday. After all they risked losing their jobs if they couldn’t get to work on time. And if they didn’t boycott…well, there might not be much to talk about on Monday evening. 

Before leaving town on Friday, E.D. Nixon had planted a journalistic seed with the city editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. Sunday it bore fruit in the form of an article about a purportedly top secret plan on the part of Montgomery blacks to boycott buses on Monday and then meet at Holt Street Baptist that evening. Whether Nixon intended this as a shot across the bow of the white community or free advertising for the boycott (or both), I don’t know. Clearly both sides would be watching the buses Monday morning.

Monday sunrise arrived, as they say, with bated breath. Would black Montgomerites stay off buses? It appeared so, perhaps unintentionally abetted by whites picking up black employees rather than go without their services, and the heavy-handed presence of the Montgomery police at bus stops frightening black riders away. The city buses were largely empty.

Rosa Park's Booking Photo

In a brief trial that morning Rosa Parks was convicted and fined $10 with additional $4 court costs. She would appeal. Meanwhile a crowd of 500 or so black supporters had gathered outside the courthouse, apprehensive that she might be mistreated, and making noises that suggested they might come get her if she was.

Given the success of the one-day boycott, another meeting was quickly organized for Monday afternoon to decide how to move forward. Beyond protesting Rosa Park’s arrest, what were the black community’s demands? Should they try to extend the boycott or use it as a threat? Old rivalries flared. E.D. Nixon accused some of the black ministers of hiding behind the skirts of black women, like Rosa, who had repeatedly stepped forward to challenge Jim Crow, “If we’re gonna be mens, now’s the time to be mens.” 

Into what was rapidly becoming a supercharged atmosphere, M.L. King arrived late and replied, “Brother Nixon, I’m not a coward. I don’t want anybody to call me a coward.” 

What happened next is arguably one of the great serendipitous moments of American history. Taylor Branch speculated on the whys and wherefores. Was it, perhaps, the way King quietly and effectively challenged Nixon? Was King just a neutral face, unattached to existing cliques? Or did most of the gathered leaders, all presumably older than King, see the path ahead as more risk than reward? When King’s name was put forward to head the new boycott organization, no one opposed him.

It was 6 PM-ish when M.L. King arrived home to tell his wife the “good news” that he was the newly-elected president of the newly-christened Montgomery Improvement Association (MIP) and seek her blessing (which she generously gave). He had less than an hour to compose his thoughts and get to Holt Street Baptist Church. He was now the keynote speaker.

The crowd that filled and overflowed Holt Street Baptist that night is generally estimated at 5,000 people. Some say it was larger. Parking near the church was out of the question. Loudspeakers were set up outside. M.L. King pushed his way several blocks through the crowd to enter the church.

Earlier the MIP elders had agreed that the size and enthusiasm of the crowd would determine whether to continue the bus boycott. At this point it seemed a foregone conclusion. No sooner had he arrived inside the church then King was introduced to the audience. 

Consider the moment…. As I earlier remarked M.L. King was a young man, barely a year out of university. Born into the black church, he knew its practices and traditions well. At Crozier Seminary and Boston University, he had embraced the Protestant theology of Reinhold Niebuhr. (Later Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama would cite Niebuhr’s influence in their lives.) Despite his relative youth, he was already a skilled preacher. Now he found himself before the largest “congregation” of his life, only this congregation didn’t seek salvation of the soul, it sought to bury the legacy of slavery, and it needed someone to show the way. 

The speech was recorded that night. It can be found onYoutube. It’s 9:26 long. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to experience the moment when a man walks into the history books.

As a rule, black congregations talk back to the preacher. I assume skilled preachers, like King, attend closely to this just-in-time feedback; and use it, to the extent practical, to craft their words and modulate their voice to better connect with the audience. 

M.L. King began speaking in measured phrases. His voice carried well. He explained why they were assembled. He cited democratic and Christian values. He reminded everyone, as if they needed reminded, of the long history of segregation, of which the Montgomery bus incident was just the latest entry. He asserted the legality of both Rosa Park’s actions the previous Thursday and the black community’s that morning. Throughout this phase of the speech the crowd politely responded with “yes, yes” and “that’s right.” He complimented the character and Christian qualities of Rosa Parks. The polite responses continued.

Martin Luther King speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church on March 5, 1955

Then, at the midpoint of his speech, he spoke the words, “And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” The crowd roared to life. Taylor Branch described it as “a giant cloud of noise.” King continued, repeating the phrase “there comes a time…” and then again, “there comes a time…” His voice grew sharper and stronger.

With the crowd now solidly in his camp, he focused on the moral imperative of the proposed boycott: advocating non-violence, championing American democracy with all its faults over a Communist alternative (almost a mandatory statement in the 1950s when any hint of political deviancy was associated with the “Red Menace”), and forewarning the assembly that its actions might falsely be compared to the violent hatred of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils. Over and over King reiterated the rightness of their cause:

“If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie: love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream”

King ended with a plea to the crowd that what comes next would require that they stick together and work together. 

It was a bravura performance. If the black citizens of Montgomery went to this mass meeting wondering what it was about, they left with a purpose, a plan, and a leader.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott would last 381 days and only end after the Supreme Court affirmed in the appeal of Browder v Gayle the unconstitutionality of bus segregation. Still, no one then or now doubts the essential role of a united African American community in bringing about this second major breach of the Jim Crow fortress. Going forward this Christian-based, non-violent form of protest would become the model for civil rights actions throughout the South.

For M.L. King, Jr., life would never return to its pre-boycott normal. He would walk the world’s stage—beloved and despised, it seems, in equal measure—until a .30-06 bullet ripped into his face twelve years later.