Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

1 “The Stirring of the Water”

9 1 “The Stirring of the Water” I think the Negroes are stirring and they won’t be held down much longer. —Virginia Durr, 1951 Racially integrated events rarely occurred in Montgomery, but for several years both whites and blacks gathered together at the city’s spacious Cramton Bowl for an Easter sunrise celebration. Segregated seating applied at the municipal arena, but the all-white planning committee worked to include African American preachers in the program as they developed the service. Typically a black minister delivered a prayer and an African American choral group from a local school led the audience in a few traditional spirituals while whites presented the balance of the program, including the sermon. The 1952 gathering proved to be the last, however. Despite steady rainfall, city bus drivers found it more convenient to drop off their black passengers several blocks from the entrance to the event. Even if the weather had not dampened spirits, the discourteous treatment they experienced at the hands of the bus drivers certainly did. Some did not stay for the service, and many more lobbied their ministers to put together all-black sunrise services in the future. Portia Trenholm, the wife of the president of Alabama State College, claimed this was “the very first spontaneous protest as a result of discourteous treatment on the buses.” The following year the black clergy bowed out of the planning process, and African Americans attended a separate sunrise service on the Alabama State College campus.1 This act of protest on the part of the black citizenry of Montgomery reveals their willingness to act collectively to resist mistreatment at the hands of white bus drivers. While this action may have seemed inconsequential at the time, it demonstrates a discernible spirit of resistance among African Americans in the city by the middle of the twentieth cen- 10 BECOMING KING tury. Years before Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Montgomery, a handful of whites and many blacks shared a growing dissatisfaction with the racial status quo. Several were already hard at work testing strategies of resistance to segregation. The ranks of those questioning and even challenging Montgomery’s racial mores near the middle of the twentieth century were diverse. While demeaning experiences due to segregation concerned the entire African American community, leaders broadened their civil rights agenda to include broader economic concerns. Specifically, Dexter Avenue pastor Vernon Johns, Pullman porter E. D. Nixon, and seamstress Rosa Parks not only challenged the physical markers of white supremacy evidenced by segregation, but also questioned the more insidious and diffuse economic oppression that gravely influenced the lives of poor and working-class African Americans. While their agendas were not uniform, several men and women had already decided their days of quiet submission under segregation were over years before King ever set foot in the city. Though their methods and philosophies differed, several were actively stirring the waters in Montgomery.2 Montgomery sits on the Alabama River in the heart of the Black Belt, a land with rich soil, a heritage of bountiful cotton crops, and a legacy of slavery. In addition to its role as a major marketplace for the sale and distribution of cotton, the city also serves as the state capital. The community’s investment in the institution of slavery made it a hotbed of southern political maneuvering following the election of Abraham Lincoln . When southern voices arguing for secession from the United States prevailed, Montgomery was chosen to host a convention of slave states. Following the Civil War, the city continued to depend upon cotton from hinterland plantations to fuel the economy. Many former slaves transitioned to either tenant farming or sharecropping, and as a result cotton production remained the economic bellwether for the region. Thanks to a combination of state government jobs and the region’s rich agricultural land, Montgomery did not aggressively pursue industrialization. The city’s economy during the twentieth century was shaped more by advances in aviation than in industrialization.3 A few years after their first flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright searched for a place to train prospective pilots during the colder winter months. “The Stirring of the Water” 11 They selected a site on the outskirts of Montgomery, which became known as Maxwell Field. While the training school was relatively shortlived , aviation remained a permanent feature of the city’s economy. Over the coming decades, Montgomery became home to two...