Book
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume III
Birth of a New Age, the third volume of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., traces King’s personal transformation as he expands his role as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to assume new responsibilities as a civil rights leader.
These documents trace the Montgomery movement from its beginning in December 1955 until its successful conclusion a year later. King’s galvanizing speech at a crowded meeting on the first day of the boycott has been transcribed from a fragile tape recording and is published here in its entirety for the first time. His impromptu remarks to the angry crowd that gathered outside his bombed home demonstrate the intensity of his commitment to nonviolence. The full text of King’s testimony at his boycott conspiracy trial provides a personal narrative of his involvement in the struggle. King’s essays and oratory, including his powerful speech at the 1956 NAACP convention, reveal how his ideas reached ever larger audiences. Correspondence with family members, college friends, fellow ministers, Gandhian proponents, and national leaders connects King to an expanding network of supporters.
King’s papers convey the immediacy of historic events. Admitting at one point that he was so busy he could “hardly breathe,” King records his responses to conflicts within the Montgomery movement and threats from segregationists. While handling the day-to-day details required to sustain a mass movement, he also appreciated the broader significance of the Montgomery movement, identifying the protest with the “longing for human dignity that motivates oppressed people all over the world.” The papers assembled in this volume depict King as a leader aware of his limitations yet also exceptionally well suited to the role that was unexpectedly thrust upon him.
Contents
Chronology
1955
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2 Mar | Claudette Colvin, 15, is arrested for allegedly violating Montgomery’s ordinance requiring segregation on the city’s buses. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council (WPC), Rosa Parks of the Montgomery NAACP, and others later meet with city and bus company officials. |
| 14 July | In Sarah Mae Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision applies to segregation on municipal buses. |
| 15 Oct | Montgomery resident Mary Louise Smith is arrested and fined for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. |
| 7 Nov | The Interstate Commerce Commission rules that segregation on interstate trains and buses and in waiting rooms used by interstate travelers is in violation of the Interstate Commerce Act. |
| 1 Dec | Rosa Parks refuses to vacate her seat and move to the rear of a Montgomery city bus to make way for a white passenger. The driver notifies the police, who arrest Parks for violating city and state ordinances. Parks is released on $100 bond. |
| 2 Dec | Robinson and other WPC members distribute thousands of leaflets calling for a one-day boycott of the city’s buses on Monday, 5 December, the day Parks is to be tried. E. D. Nixon calls King to discuss the arrest of Parks and to arrange for a meeting of black leaders at Dexter that evening. Those present agree to call a citywide meeting on 5 December at Holt Street Baptist Church. King and Ralph Abernathy remain at Dexter after the meeting to mimeograph a redrafted leaflet publicizing the bus boycott and the upcoming mass meeting. |
| 3 Dec | Boycott leaflets are distributed to black residents. Television and radio stations report plans for the Monday boycott and mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church. |
| 4 Dec | Joe Azbell reports on the plans for a boycott in a front-page article, “Negro Groups Ready Boycott of City Lines,” in the Montgomery Advertiser. The city’s black ministers announce the one-day boycott from their pulpits on Sunday morning. King preaches at Dexter on “Why Does God Hide Himself?” |
| 5 Dec | In the morning, King watches empty buses pass by his home, indicating a successful first day of the boycott. Parks pleads not guilty but is convicted and fined $14. Fred D. Gray, her lawyer, appeals the conviction. In the afternoon, eighteen black leaders meet to plan the evening mass meeting. The group organizes itself as the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), agrees to an agenda for the mass meeting, and elects its officers, including King as president. Later, several thousand people gather at Holt Street Baptist Church. King gives the main address. Abernathy presents resolutions, which are adopted resoundingly, recommending that the boycott continue indefinitely. King leaves the mass meeting early to speak at a YMCA father-and-son banquet. |
| 6 Dec | King meets with reporters to discuss the MIA demands. |
| 7 Dec | The MIA executive board assembles for the first time to organize its committees. The Alabama Council on Human Relations (ACHR) offers to bring together the opposing factions, including the bus company, city officials, and MIA leaders. |
| 8 Dec | King and other members of the MIA executive board meet for four hours with city officials, representatives of the Montgomery City Lines, and members of the ACHR. The MIA proposes courteous treatment by bus drivers; seating on a first-come, first-served basis, with Negroes seated rear to front, whites front to rear; and employment of Negro bus drivers on predominantly Negro lines. These requests are not approved. King calls Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, leader of a brief bus boycott in 1953, to ask for advice on transportation alternatives. That night the MIA’s second mass meeting, held at St. John AME Church, approves the establishment of a car pool system as a temporary alternative to the buses. |
| 9 Dec | Montgomery City Lines announces that it will cut bus service to “most Negro districts” effective at 6 P.M. on 10 December. A conference of MIA leaders and bus officials fails to reach a compromise as bus company officials insist that state and city laws require them to enforce segregation. |
| 10 Dec | King and the MIA release a “Statement of Negroes on Bus Situation” suggesting that the bus company could accept MIA’s seating proposal and remain within the law if it so desired. |
| 11 Dec | Ralph W. Riley, president of the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, is the guest speaker at Dexter’s seventy-eighth-anniversary services. |
| 12 Dec | At the third MIA mass meeting, held at Bethel Baptist Church, leaders announce that an organized carpool will begin the following day. A letter to the editor, “Lesson from Gandhi,” in the Montgomery Advertiser from a white city librarian, Juliette Morgan, compares the bus boycott to Gandhi’s famous “salt march.” |
| 13 Dec | King, Gray, and Parks meet with W. C. Patton, state field secretary for the NAACP. After a special meeting of the Montgomery NAACP executive committee, Parks authorizes the NAACP to take charge of the legal aspects of her case. In a statement to the press, King suggests that the boycott could last for a year. |
| 15 Dec | Amid reports that Montgomery black taxicab drivers are charging only ten cents per passenger, city officials remind cab operators that the minimum fare is forty-five cents. Montgomery police chief G. J. Ruppenthal orders strict enforcement of a city law prohibiting more than three people in the front seat of passenger cars. King gives a progress report at an MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 16 Dec | K E. Totten, vice president of National City Lines in Chicago, parent company of Montgomery City Lines, meets with Mayor W. A. Gayle, City Commissioner Frank Parks, and Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers. |
| 17 Dec | During a meeting with the city commission and MIA leaders, Totten leaves it up to the citizens of Montgomery to resolve the question of segregation. After the meeting, Mayor Gayle appoints a committee composed of eight black leaders, including King, and eight white leaders to resolve the crisis. The committee deadlocks on a resolution offered by the white members to postpone the boycott until 15 January but agrees to a resolution requesting more courtesy from the bus drivers. The carpool reportedly involves two hundred private cars, more than one hundred taxis, and eight gas stations. |
| 18 Dec | King preaches at Dexter. |
| 19 Dec | After a contentious two-hour meeting, the mayor’s committee adjourns when Luther Ingalls, secretary of the local Citizens Council, joins the group. King charges that certain white members come to the meetings with “preconceived ideas.” King presides at and addresses an MIA mass meeting at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church. |
| 22 Dec | The MIA executive board agrees to make no concessions on its three basic demands and to hold no further conferences with the city commission and the bus company until they recognize the legitimacy of these demands. An evening MIA mass meeting is held at Mt. Zion AME Zion Church. |
| 25 Dec | The black ministers of Montgomery and their congregations place an advertisement titled “To the Montgomery Public,” explaining the boycott in the Sunday edition of the Montgomery Advertiser and the Alabama Journal. King preaches at Dexter on “The Light That Shineth amid Darkness.” |
| 26 Dec | An MIA mass meeting is held at Beulah Baptist Church. |
| 29 Dec | An MIA mass meeting is held at Day Street Baptist Church. |
| 30 Dec | Mayor Gayle urges Montgomery citizens to patronize city buses or risk losing the bus company’s business. |
1956
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1 Jan | King preaches “Our God Is Able” at Dexter. |
| 3 Jan | The Montgomery City Lines tells the city commission that unless fares are doubled, it will have to shut down because it is losing as much as twenty-two cents a mile. The fare increase is approved the following day. |
| 5 Jan | King presides at an MIA mass meeting held at St. John AME Church. |
| 6 Jan | More than one thousand people attend a meeting of the Central Alabama Citizens Council. Police Commissioner Sellers appears at the meeting and announces that he will join the council. |
| 8 Jan | King, Sr., preaches at Dexter, while King, Jr., preaches a sermon titled “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. |
| 9 Jan | King and other MIA leaders meet with the city commission for two hours but resolve nothing. King speaks at an MIA mass meeting at Bethel Baptist Church. |
| 10 Jan | Complying with an Interstate Commerce Commission order to end segregation in airline, railroad, and bus terminals serving interstate passengers, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad removes signs enforcing segregation from all of its Alabama terminals. |
| 11 Jan | At the request of Circuit Solicitor William F. Thetford, Police Commissioner Sellers initiates an investigation of the Montgomery movement. Police Chief Ruppenthal delivers copies of Montgomery city ordinances requiring segregated facilities to managers of bus and train stations. |
| 12 Jan | In response to the city’s rejection of its most recent offer to end the boycott, the MIA executive board decides to boycott the buses indefinitely. |
| 14 Jan | Montgomery Advertiser reporter Thomas Johnson interviews King at Dexter for an article scheduled to appear on 19 January. |
| 15 Jan | King preaches at Dexter on “How Do We Believe in a Good God in the Face of Glaring Evil?” |
| 16 Jan | At a mass meeting, King announces that the MIA will hold a general mass meeting every Monday and five meetings every Thursday night in different areas of the city. He reports that he has received threats by telephone. |
| 17 Jan | King leaves Montgomery to attend a session of the National Baptist Convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his parents. Police Commissioner Sellers asserts that 85 to 90 percent of Montgomery blacks want to ride the buses but are afraid of violence. |
| 18 Jan | The white members of the biracial mayor’s committee insist that state and local law require segregation but recommend reserved sections for white and black passengers in proportion to the average number of riders of each race. King and other black committee members reject the recommendation. |
| 19 Jan | A Montgomery Advertiser article entitled “The Rev. King Is Boycott Boss” reports that, although King agrees with the NAACP position on the abolishment of segregation, the bus boycott seeks only a “better form of segregation.” An MIA mass meeting is held at King Hill Baptist Church. |
| 21 Jan | After meeting with “a group of prominent Negro ministers,” the city commission announces that the bus situation is resolved. King calls an emergency meeting of the MIA executive board and charges that the statement is unfounded because no MIA leaders were at the meeting. On Saturday night and Sunday morning, King and other members of the MIA board announce that the boycott is still on. |
| 22 Jan | King preaches at Dexter on “Redirecting Our Missionary Zeal.” |
| 23 Jan | Mayor Gayle declares that there will be no more discussions with black leaders until the MIA is willing to end the boycott. All three members of the city commission announce that they have joined the local Citizens Council. At a meeting of the MIA executive board, King offers his resignation, but it is not accepted. A large crowd attending a mass meeting at Beulah Baptist Church affirms support for the boycott. |
| 24 Jan | Mayor Gayle urges whites to stop offering rides to blacks who work for them. Commissioner Parks receives “dozens” of telephone calls from businessmen who report that they will fire blacks who boycott the buses. |
| 26 Jan | Rufus A. Lewis and four other Montgomery blacks organize a transit company and petition the city commission for a franchise to operate it. King leaves Dexter in his car with a friend and the church secretary. After picking up three others at an MIA station, King is stopped for traveling 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. He is arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, and jailed. Abernathy arrives to bail him out; as a crowd gathers at the jail, prison officials escort King out of the jail and drive him back to town. According to King, on this day and the previous two more than one hundred traffic citations are issued to carpool drivers. Later that evening, a group of King’s friends decide to organize protection for him. Seven MIA mass meetings are held to accommodate black residents interested in hearing the story of King’s arrest. |
| 27 Jan | The MIA and other black civic and ministerial organizations publish a statement, “To the Citizens of Montgomery,” in the Montgomery Advertiser declaring that they do not seek to challenge segregation laws but to express dissatisfaction with treatment on city buses. The MIA holds an executive board meeting. According to King’s later account in Stride Toward Freedom, King receives a threatening phone call late in the evening, prompting a spiritual revelation that fills him with strength to carry on in spite of persecution. |
| 28 Jan | King is fined $14 by recorder’s court judge Luther H. Waller for speeding. |
| 29 Jan | King speaks at Dexter’s Youth Day Service. |
| 30 Jan | The MIA executive board authorizes Fred D. Gray to file a federal suit challenging segregation on Montgomery buses. At 9:15 P.M., while King is speaking before two thousand congregants at a mass meeting at First Baptist Church, his home is bombed. Coretta Scott King and their daughter, Yolanda Denise, are not injured. King addresses a large crowd that gathers outside the house, pleading for nonviolence. The city commission promises police protection for King and offers a $500 reward for the capture and conviction of the persons responsible for the bombing. The Kings stay at the home of Dexter deacon J. T. Brooks. Late that night King, Sr., his daughter Christine, son A. D., and Coretta’s father, Obadiah Scott, arrive hoping to convince King and his family to return to Atlanta, but he refuses. |
| 31 Jan | King and four other leaders meet with Alabama governor James E. Folsom to express their lack of confidence in the protection offered by the Montgomery city police. |
| 1 Feb | Gray and Charles D. Langford file a federal district court petition (which becomes Aurelia S. Browder v. William A. Gayle) on behalf of five Montgomery women to enjoin the city commissioners from enforcing segregation on city buses. At the county sheriff’s office, King, Abernathy, and Rev. H. H. Hubbard apply for a permit to allow a night watchman at King’s home to carry a gun. Sheriff Butler denies the permit. A bomb explodes in the yard of Nixon, the MIA treasurer. |
| 2 Feb | King and the MIA executive board approve a security patrol at mass meetings and agree to move MIA headquarters from the Alabama Negro Baptist Center to Abernathy’s First Baptist Church. Jeanetta Reese withdraws from the suit filed by Gray and Langford, explaining that she and her husband have been threatened with economic retaliation and violence. King presides at an MIA-NAACP meeting at the Baptist Center. |
| 5 Feb | King preaches at Dexter on “It’s Hard to Be a Christian.” |
| 6 Feb | After several days of demonstrations, white citizens and students riot at the University of Alabama against the court-ordered admission of Autherine Lucy, the first black student in the school’s history. The university’s board of trustees responds by barring Lucy from attending classes. King speaks at an MIA mass meeting at Day Street Baptist Church. The local Selective Service Board changes Gray’s draft classification from 4-D, an exempt status, to I-A. |
| 8 Feb | In a Montgomery Advertiser article, “Group to Study Possibility of Ending Boycott of Buses,” which reported that the MIA executive board will consider ending the boycott, King says that any recommendations agreed upon by the board would be voted on by a full meeting of the MIA at the next mass meeting. The MIA executive board meets. King denies that the meeting had been called to discuss the end of the boycott. The Men of Montgomery, a civic group of white businessmen, releases a statement calling for an end to racial tension. |
| 9 Feb | In a telegram to President Eisenhower, AFL-CIO president George Meany urges an FBI investigation of violence in Montgomery and elsewhere in Alabama. Abernathy speaks at an MIA mass meeting in King’s absence. |
| 10 Feb | Eleven thousand people attending a Citizens Council rally in Montgomery cheer Mayor Gayle and Police Commissioner Sellers for their support of segregation on Montgomery buses. |
| 11 Feb | King arrives in Chicago for a speaking engagement. |
| 12 Feb | King preaches the anniversary sermon at Shiloh Baptist Church in Chicago. |
| 13 Feb | Judge Eugene Carter directs the Montgomery County grand jury to determine whether the boycott of Montgomery buses violates Alabama’s antiboycott law. While in Chicago, King and Rev. Owen D. Pelt meet with officials of the United Packinghouse Workers Union to discuss lobbying the Chicago-based parent company of the Montgomery City Lines, the National City Lines. |
| 14 Feb | In a Chicago news conference, King reports that a grand jury is investigating the “legality” of the bus boycott and predicts that several leaders of the Montgomery movement will be indicted. King leaves Chicago by train for Atlanta. |
| 16 Feb | King returns to Montgomery and addresses an MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 18 Feb | Gray is charged by the Montgomery grand jury with “unlawful appearance as an attorney” for representing Reese after she had withdrawn from the suit. King drives to Atlanta, where he releases a statement condemning the grand jury’s actions. King then travels to Nashville for a series of speaking engagements. |
| 19 Feb | At 11 A.M., King gives a sermon entitled “What Is Man?” at Fisk Memorial Chapel in Nashville as part of Fisk University’s Religious Emphasis Week. While in Nashville, King visits Vanderbilt University and concludes that 90 percent of the white students he speaks with are willing to accept integration. |
| 20 Feb | At 11 A.M., King speaks at Nashville’s Public Health Lecture Hall of Meharry Medical College on the “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” The bus company and the city commission endorse a proposal by the Men of Montgomery that does not meet the MIA’s demands. Abernathy reports that the congregants at a mass meeting vote down the proposal by a margin of 3,998 to 2. |
| 21 Feb | At 9:40 A.M., King speaks at Tennessee State University in Nashville on “Going Forward by Going Backward.” The Montgomery grand jury indicts 115 leaders (later reduced to 89) of the Montgomery movement on misdemeanor charges of violating Alabama’s antiboycott law. Bayard Rustin arrives in Montgomery and speaks with Abernathy and Nixon. Late in the evening, King speaks on the telephone with Abernathy about the indictments. |
| 22 Feb | Seventy-five indicted boycott leaders appear at the county jail; they are arrested and released on bond. King flies to Atlanta, where a group of family friends convened by his father fails to dissuade him from returning to Montgomery. In Montgomery, Judge Carter upholds the conviction of Parks by the recorder’s court. City attorneys move to dismiss the suit that Gray and Langford have taken to federal district court. |
| 23 Feb | King, his father, and family drive to Montgomery. King goes to the county jail, where he is arrested and released on bond. He agrees to plead guilty to the speeding charge filed against him in January. King and other leaders meet with Arthur D. Shores and Peter Hall, Birmingham attorneys sent to Montgomery by the NAACP to assist in defending the indicted leaders. About five thousand people hear King address an evening MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 24 Feb | King and other indicted leaders are arraigned in circuit court and plead not guilty to boycott-related charges. Judge Carter assigns a trial date for the week of 19 March. King and the MIA board designate this day as Montgomery’s Prayer and Pilgrimage Day, on which all supporters walk to work. King and other leaders gather in the evening to discuss nonviolence with Rustin. |
| 26 Feb | King preaches at Dexter on “Faith in Man.” Rustin attends the services and meets with the Kings in the evening. |
| 27 Feb | King addresses an MIA meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church. |
| 28 Feb | Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) field secretary Glenn E. Smiley arrives in Montgomery and interviews King. |
| 29 Feb | King and other indicted leaders agree to forgo a trial by jury, allowing Judge Carter to hear their case. In Friendship, a northern group coordinating economic aid for those involved in the southern fight for integration, holds its founding conference in New York. |
| 1 Mar | Gray files a bill of demurrer in Montgomery Circuit Court, charging that the 1921 Alabama antiboycott law used to arrest the bus boycott leaders is unconstitutional. King presides at and gives opening remarks at an MIA meeting at the Hutchinson Street Baptist Church. |
| 5 Mar | King speaks at an MIA meeting at Bethel Baptist Church. |
| 6 Mar | Alabama state legislators introduce strict new racial segregation bills, including one that strengthens segregation on buses and at public events. The Alabama lower house also unanimously approves a resolution urging the Supreme Court to modify its school desegregation decision. |
| 7 Mar | King, Rustin, and William Worthy meet in Birmingham to discuss MIA tactics and strategy. |
| 8 Mar | Gray and Langford amend Browder v. Gayle, removing Reese from the list of plaintiffs. |
| 11 Mar | Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church in Nashville, is Youth Day speaker at Dexter. |
| 12 Mar | Ninety-six US Congressmen from eleven southern states issue a “Southern Manifesto,” which declares the Brown decision an abuse of judicial power and pledges to use all lawful means to resist its implementation. |
| 13 Mar | Governor Folsom publicly denounces “mobocracy” and urges Montgomery city officials and black leaders to reach a settlement of the bus boycott. |
| 14 Mar | Eisenhower states at his weekly news conference that he wants a congressional joint commission established to facilitate a meeting of black and white leaders from the South. |
| 18 Mar | King preaches at Dexter on “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious.” On the eve of the trial against boycott leaders, eight thousand people attend prayer meetings in Montgomery to demonstrate their continued support for the boycott. |
| 19 Mar | King, the first of eighty-nine leaders to be tried, appears in a Montgomery courtroom for his four-day trial. In opening remarks at an evening mass meeting at St. John AME Church, King urges the protesters to maintain their morale and declares that “we want no cowards in our crowd.” |
| 20 Mar | The prosecution continues its case against King. |
| 21 Mar | Defense attorneys for King begin their presentation. In a press conference, President Eisenhower urges the South to “show progress” but calls for moderation on both sides of the segregation issue. |
| 22 Mar | King testifies at his trial in his own defense. Judge Carter finds him guilty of leading an illegal boycott and sentences him to pay a $500 fine plus court costs or to serve 386 days in jail. The sentence is suspended when King files an appeal and is released on $1,000 bond. Judge Carter orders a continuance in the other cases until final appeals are completed in King’s case. At an evening mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, King announces that the boycott will continue and that his conviction has not lessened his determination. |
| 23 Mar | King’s attorneys begin the formal appeals process. Gray, speaking in King’s place at the Union Methodist Church in Boston, tells the crowd that Montgomery blacks will not give up. |
| 25 Mar | King addresses a congregation of 2,500 people at the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. The rally, sponsored by the Brooklyn Chapter of the National Association of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, raises more than $4,000 for the MIA. |
| 27 Mar | Alabama attorney general John Patterson files a motion urging dismissal of the Browder v. Gayle federal suit against Montgomery and Alabama transportation segregation laws on the grounds that the case should be heard in a state court first. |
| 28 Mar | The National Deliverance Day of Prayer is observed in cities nationwide as churches and synagogues keep their doors open all day and urge boycott supporters to donate one hour’s worth of pay to the MIA. The Massachusetts legislature suspends activities for an hour in support of the bus boycott. |
| 29 Mar | King presents the opening remarks at an MIA meeting at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church. The Louisville Defender publishes King’s 18 March sermon “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious.” |
| 30 Mar | King announces that the MIA is planning a block-by-block voter registration campaign among Montgomery blacks. |
| Apr | Liberation publishes King’s article “Our Struggle.” |
| 1 Apr | King preaches at Dexter’s Easter Sunday services. |
| 2 Apr | The Montgomery city commissioners deny the MIA’s request for permission to establish and operate a black-operated bus company. King presents the opening remarks at an evening MIA mass meeting at Beulah Baptist Church. |
| 3 Apr | Montgomery City Lines receives permission from the city commissioners to reduce its bus service by another 135 miles. |
| 10 Apr | In Birmingham, King speaks to the Baptist Ministers Conference in the morning and to the Birmingham Hungry Club at the YMCA in the afternoon. In the evening, King speaks on “The Negro’s Re-evaluation of his Nature and Destiny” at the Pan-Community Council Annual Forum at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. |
| 11 Apr | The Chicago NAACP sponsors an “Hour of Prayer” and rally. Abernathy and Roy Wilkins speak to a Chicago Coliseum audience of five thousand that contributes $2,500 for the MIA. |
| 13 Apr | King speaks before 1,600 people on “The Declaration of Independence and the Negro” at the Chicago Area Conference of Religious Liberals’ Jefferson Day Rally at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. |
| 14 Apr | At the Ohio NAACP’s banquet in Columbus, King criticizes William Faulkner’s call for gradualism in the South. |
| 15 Apr | J. Pius Barbour preaches on “Can You Change a Social Order without Violence?” at Dexter. Over the next three days, Barbour gives the Spring Lecture Series in the evenings at Dexter. |
| 16 Apr | King delivers the opening remarks at an MIA meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 17 Apr | Black citizens in Capetown, South Africa, boycott the city’s bus lines after the National Transport Commission orders all blacks to sit upstairs on double-decker buses. |
| 20 Apr | King speaks at a mass meeting at Detroit’s Bethel AME Church organized by Jesse Jai McNeil. |
| 22 Apr | King gives the Youth Day sermon at Good Street Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. |
| 23 Apr | In Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, the Supreme Court affirms a federal appellate court ruling striking down segregated seating on buses in Columbia, South Carolina, and making segregation on any public transportation illegal. Montgomery City Lines informs its drivers that they can no longer enforce segregation on the city buses, but Mayor Gayle announces that Montgomery will continue to enforce state and city segregation laws. Government officials throughout the South denounce the court’s decision, and C. C. Owen, president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, claims that the ruling does not apply to Alabama. In the evening, King presents the opening remarks at an MIA mass meeting at Dexter. He tells reporters that the boycott will continue until the MIA decides how to react to the court’s ruling. |
| 24 Apr | Bus lines in thirteen southern cities, including Dallas and Richmond, discontinue segregation in response to the Supreme Court ruling, but officials in Alabama and Georgia pledge to resist the ruling. In Montgomery, Police Commissioner Sellers announces that drivers who permit desegregation on their buses will be arrested. After a meeting of the MIA executive board, King announces that there will be no immediate change in strategy and the boycott will continue. In Washington, DC, seventy-five black leaders convene at a State of the Race Conference to discuss rising racial tensions in the South. A Louisiana judge orders a permanent halt of all NAACP activities in that state. |
| 25 Apr | B. W. Franklin, vice president of National City Lines, announces that the company will stand behind any of its drivers who are arrested for refusing to enforce segregation. Mayor Gayle and Commissioner Sellers imply that they might revoke the franchise or seek a court injunction against Montgomery City Lines if it violates local segregation statutes. Officials at National City Lines inform the MIA that union contract stipulations make it nearly impossible for them to hire black drivers. |
| 26 Apr | King presides and gives a speech at a mass meeting at Day Street Baptist Church, and more than three thousand people vote unanimously to continue the boycott until the city “withdraws its threats to arrest drivers and passengers who violate segregation laws.” |
| 27 Apr | A meeting between Montgomery officials and bus line representatives fails to produce a solution. |
| 29 Apr | King preaches the Sunday service at Dexter on “Fleeing from God.” In the afternoon, he is the Men’s Day speaker at the Hunter’s Chapel AME Zion Church in Tuscaloosa. |
| 30 Apr | King delivers the opening remarks at an MIA mass meeting held at Holt Street Baptist Church. |
| May | FOR’s journal, Fellowship, publishes King’s article “Walk for Freedom.” |
| 1 May | Montgomery city officials file suit in Montgomery Circuit Court asking for a temporary injunction to restrain the bus company from implementing its desegregation policy. |
| 2 May | Attorneys for the Montgomery City Lines file a demurrer in circuit court requesting dismissal of the city’s bill of complaint against the bus company. |
| 9 May | Judge Walter B. Jones of the circuit court rules that Montgomery and Alabama segregation laws are constitutional and orders Montgomery City Lines to abandon its new policy of not enforcing segregation. Spokesmen for the bus company announce that the company will comply with the court order. |
| 10 May | At an MIA mass meeting leaders circulate a questionnaire assessing community interest in the establishment of an MIA bank. |
| 11 May | A three-judge US District Court panel hears Browder v. Gayle. Judges Richard Rives, Seybourn Lynne, and Frank M. Johnson, Jr., hear testimony by city and state officials, employees of the bus company, and the four black women plaintiffs. |
| 12 May | King, King, Sr., and Abernathy attend a meeting of eighteen leaders of the southern desegregation movement organized by Smiley and FOR on the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta. The US District Court hearing in the case of Browder v. Gayle ends. |
| 13 May | King delivers the Mother’s Day sermon at Dexter, speaking on “The Role of the Negro Mother in Preparing Youth for Integration.” |
| 14 May | Eleanor Roosevelt, in her “My Day” column, reports on her meeting with Rosa Parks. |
| 15 May | King is in Berkeley, California, to receive a book of recognition and remembrance from the Stiles Hall University YMCA. |
| 17 May | King delivers the sermon “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore” to an audience of ten thousand in New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine in observance of the National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving. Later that evening, he speaks on “A Realistic Look at Race Relations” at an NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria celebrating the second anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. |
| 18 May | The Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice awards King, in absentia, its John Haynes Holmes-Arthur L. Weatherly Prize for Outstanding Leadership in Social Justice. |
| 19 May | At a Harlem reception organized by the Committee for Better Human Relations, King announces that Montgomery blacks plan to apply for a license to operate an African-American bank. |
| 20 May | King gives the Youth Emphasis Day sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Pittsburgh. He remains in that city through 23 May to participate in various activities at the church. |
| 24 May | Twenty thousand people attend a civil rights rally in Madison Square Garden to hear Eleanor Roosevelt, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Rabbi Israel Goldstein, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Autherine Lucy. Nixon and Parks represent the MIA at the rally. |
| 26 May | Parks addresses a National Council of Negro Women conference in Washington, DC. |
| 27 May | King preaches at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for the dedication of its new religious education building. |
| 28 May | King attends the Fisk University commencement, where he receives the first annual Fisk Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. Students at Florida A&M launch a bus boycott in response to the arrest of two female students on 26 May. |
| 29 May | The Florida A&M bus boycott spreads to the city of Tallahassee. |
| 30 May | C. K. Steele and Tallahassee’s Inter-Civic Council confer with the city manager, call for first-come, first-served seating on buses, more courteous treatment, and the hiring of black drivers. Despite the decision by city officials not to prosecute the two Florida A&M students, the bus boycott in Tallahassee gains momentum. |
| 31 May | King offers his “Recommendations” at an MIA executive board meeting. |
| 1 June | Attorney General Patterson obtains a court order banning most NAACP activities in Alabama. The injunction, issued by Judge Jones of the Montgomery Circuit Court, forbids the Alabama NAACP from engaging in fund-raising, collecting dues, and recruiting new members. The NAACP denies Patterson’s charges that it organized the Montgomery bus boycott or employed Lucy to integrate the University of Alabama but says it will abide by the injunction. |
| 4 June | King presides at an MIA mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, now held only once a week. The Tallahassee City Transit Lines suspends service in the black districts of the city in response to the continuing boycott. |
| 5 June | The three-judge US District Court panel rules two-to-one in the case of Browder v. Gayle that segregation on Alabama’s intrastate buses is unconstitutional and gives lawyers for each side two weeks to submit written suggestions on how the formal antisegregation order should be entered. President Owen of the Alabama Public Service Commission announces that the state will appeal the decision. King says the boycott will continue until the antisegregation ruling is implemented. Blacks in Birmingham react to the banning of the NAACP in Alabama by organizing the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, led by Fred Shuttlesworth. In Tallahassee, boycott leaders announce that their goal is now desegregation of the city buses. |
| 6 June | The Kings and the Abernathys leave Montgomery by automobile for a vacation in California, stopping first in Los Angeles. |
| 10 June | King preaches a guest sermon, the first of several, at the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles. |
| 11 June | After publicly charging that MIA leaders have misappropriated funds from the MIA treasury, Fields resigns from his position as secretary of the MIA. The NAACP announces that the organization will take legal steps to dissolve the injunction that bans its operation in Alabama. |
| 12 June | The MIA, denying any misuse of organization funds, dismisses Fields’s charges as false. |
| 17 June | King cancels a scheduled speaking engagement at the Ward AME Church in Los Angeles in order to return to Montgomery to deal with the Fields crisis. The congregation of Bell Street Baptist Church votes unanimously to remove Fields from its pulpit. |
| 18 June | At a mass meeting at Beulah Baptist Church, Fields retracts his allegations about the MIA’s misappropriation of money and apologizes for his attack on MIA leaders. King asks the crowd to forgive Fields for the false charges. |
| 19 June | Attorneys for Alabama respond to the antisegregation ruling. Hours later, the federal three-judge panel issues a permanent injunction against segregation on Montgomery city buses, subsequently suspending it for ten days in order to allow appeal to the US Supreme Court. The Tallahassee City Transit Lines announces that it will cease operation by 1 July if the bus boycott does not end. |
| 21 June | The Montgomery city commission announces that it will appeal the federal court decision to the Supreme Court. |
| 23 June | The first issue of the MIA Newsletter is released, with Robinson as editor. |
| 26 June | At a press conference before the opening of the annual NAACP convention in San Francisco, King proposes a student boycott of segregated schools to force compliance with the Brown decision. |
| 27 June | King addresses the forty-seventh annual NAACP convention in San Francisco on “The Montgomery Story.” |
| 28 June | The Alabama Public Service Commission formally asks the US Supreme Court to reverse the federal district court’s 5 June decision to ban segregation on Alabama buses. Montgomery city attorneys join the state’s appeal the following day. |
| 29 June | Montgomery City Lines lays off twenty-one drivers. |
| 30 June | King returns to Montgomery. |
| July | Ebony publishes an article entitled “The King Plan for Freedom.” |
| 1 July | King receives an Honorable Merit Award in absentia at Detroit’s Panorama of Progress, sponsored by Diggs Enterprises, Inc. |
| 3 July | King receives a Citation for Distinguished Christian Service from the National Fraternity Council of Churches, U.S.A., Inc., in Birmingham. |
| 8 July | Samuel D. Proctor, president of Virginia Union University, is Men’s Day speaker at Dexter. |
| 11 July | A white policeman initially refuses to allow King, his wife, and Robert Williams to pass through the whites-only waiting room of the Montgomery railroad station so they can board their train. |
| 12 July | King tells a Race Relations Institute meeting at Fisk University that bus boycotts in Birmingham or Miami are likely to fail for demographic reasons. Attorney General Patterson subpoenas King to appear as a witness in State of Alabama v. NAACP. |
| 17-18 July | King, King, Sr., Abernathy, Steele, and Smiley attend a two-day FOR-sponsored workshop stressing nonviolent social protest tactics at Tuskegee Institute. |
| 20 July | King addresses an NAACP mass meeting in Washington, DC. King’s appeal of his conviction is submitted to the Alabama Court of Appeals. |
| 22 July | King is the guest speaker for Men’s Day at New Hope Baptist Church in Niagara Falls, New York. |
| 23 July | King addresses executives at the American Baptist Assembly/American Home Mission Agencies Conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, on the subject of “Non-Aggression Procedures to Interracial Harmony.” |
| 25 July | Judge Jones of the Montgomery Circuit Court fines the Alabama NAACP $10,000 and orders the organization to make its records available or face higher fines and suspension of its operations in Alabama. |
| 26 July | With King presiding, the MIA executive board concurs with its legal counsel and agrees to wait until the Supreme Court reconvenes in the fall to consider its case challenging Alabama segregation laws instead of approaching a single Supreme Court justice for an immediate decision. |
| Aug | Redbook publishes the article by William Peters about King entitled “Our Weapon Is Love.” |
| 3 Aug | U.S. News and World Report publishes King’s speech made to the annual NAACP convention in San Francisco on 27 June. |
| 5 Aug | King gives the main address at the British-American Association of Colored Brothers in Windsor, Ontario. |
| 7 Aug | King addresses the National Negro Funeral Directors Association in Cleveland. |
| 11 Aug | King testifies before the platform committee of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, recommending a strong civil rights plank in the party platform. That evening, he speaks in Buffalo to the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity on “The Birth of a New Age” and receives an Award of Honor. |
| 12 Aug | King preaches on “Rediscovering Lost Values” at Mount Olivet Baptist Church in New York City. Homer Alexander Jack delivers an address titled “From Gandhi to Montgomery: The Life and Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi” at Dexter. |
| 13 Aug | The Alabama NAACP asks the Alabama Supreme Court to lift the ban on its operations and to revoke the fine placed upon it. The request is denied. |
| 23 Aug | King addresses the Montgomery chapter of the ACHR. |
| 25 Aug | The home of Robert Graetz, the white minister of Trinity Lutheran Church and an MIA executive board member, is bombed. |
| 27 Aug | King addresses the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of Elks in Los Angeles and receives the fraternal order’s Elijah P. Lovejoy Award. He and leaders of other black Montgomery civic organizations ask President Eisenhower for a federal investigation of racial violence in Montgomery. |
| 7 Sept | King preaches at the seventy-sixth annual National Baptist Convention meeting in Denver on “Paul’s Letter to American Christians.” Coretta Scott King sings, and Alberta Williams King plays the organ at the convention. Later, King speaks at a Build Negro Business meeting at Denver’s Zion Baptist Church. |
| 8 Sept | Insurance policies on seventeen MIA station wagons are canceled. |
| 9 Sept | King preaches the guest sermon at Macedonia Baptist Church in Denver. |
| 12 Sept | King accepts an award in absentia from New York’s Afro Arts Theatre. |
| 13 Sept | King presides as the MIA executive board creates a special committee to work toward changing “the bitterness or unfavorable attitude” of white citizens. |
| 17 Sept | King presents the opening remarks at an MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 18 Sept | King and the MIA executive board meet and agree to contact the U. S. Justice Department and the FBI for assistance and protection. King, Graetz, and Robinson are assigned to contact Governor Folsom. Lloyd’s of London’s liability insurance for Christian churches of Montgomery, at $11,000 per car, becomes effective. |
| 25 Sept | The MIA’s special committee meets to consider how to create more “wholesome” attitudes among the city’s whites. King says, “We should move from protest to reconciliation.” |
| 27 Sept | En route to Hampton, Virginia, King is denied service in the dining room of the Dobbs House restaurant at the Atlanta airport. King then delivers a speech entitled “The Montgomery Story” at Hampton Institute. |
| 30 Sept | Coretta Scott King gives a concert at Dexter. |
| 1 Oct | King presides at an MIA mass meeting at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church. This meeting includes a training session in nonviolence led by King as well as the premiere of the FOR-produced film about the bus boycott, Walking for Freedom. |
| 5 Oct | King addresses the twenty-first annual convention of the Virginia State NAACP at Petersburg on “Desegregation in the Future.” He stays at the home of Wyatt Tee Walker, pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church. |
| 14 Oct | Arenia C. Mallory of Lexington, Mississippi, speaks at Dexter’s Women’s Day service. |
| 15 Oct | King speaks at the Annual Trade Week Rally of the Durham, North Carolina, Business and Professional Chain. |
| 16 Oct | King consults with Bayard Rustin at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Later, he delivers an address on “Non-Aggression Procedures to Interracial Harmony” to the New York State Convention of Universalists in Cortland. |
| 18 Oct | King addresses the Pennsylvania State Baptist Convention in Harrisburg. |
| 19 Oct | Coretta Scott King gives a concert at Chicago’s Olivet Baptist Church. |
| 20 Oct | The Tallahassee Inter-Civic Council and twenty-one individual defendants are found guilty of operating a carpool for boycotters. |
| 21 Oct | King preaches at Dexter. |
| 24 Oct | After attending an executive board meeting, King presents the year-end report at the Dexter annual business meeting. |
| 28 Oct | After dinner with former advisor L. Harold DeWolf and his wife in Boston, King delivers “A Realistic Look at Race Relations” at the Ford Hall Forum. |
| 29 Oct | King rushes back to Montgomery from Boston after learning of a possible court injunction against the MIA’s carpool and announces that the bus boycott is continuing. The MIA holds simultaneous mass meetings at Mt. Zion and St. John AME Churches. |
| 1 Nov | Boycott leaders submit a petition in US District Court for an injunction and a restraining order to block the city commissioners’ move for an injunction against the carpool. Later that night, Montgomery city authorities deliver a petition asking Judge Carter of the Montgomery Circuit Court for an injunction to halt the MIA carpool. |
| 2 Nov | King delivers an address to the Virginia Teachers Association convention at Virginia Union University in Richmond. In Montgomery, Judge Carter sets a hearing for 13 November. Meanwhile, Judge Johnson of the federal district court denies the motion by MIA legal representatives for an emergency restraining order to prevent city interference with car pool activity and schedules a hearing on the injunction for 14 November. |
| 4 Nov | King preaches “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” at Dexter. |
| 5 Nov | King gives the opening remarks at an MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church. |
| 8 Nov | Coretta Scott King gives a concert in Mobile, Alabama. |
| 11 Nov | King is the guest speaker at the Tuskegee Institute Chapel. |
| 13 Nov | The US Supreme Court affirms the lower court opinion in Browder v. Gayle, declaring Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws unconstitutional. Judge Carter grants a temporary injunction halting the MIA carpools. |
| 14 Nov | Judge Johnson refuses to forestall enforcement of the state court injunction halting carpool operations. That evening, King speaks at MIA mass meetings at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church and Holt Street Baptist Church, where eight thousand attendees vote unanimously to end the boycott when the court mandate arrives. |
| 17 Nov | Thurgood Marshall and three other attorneys ask Supreme Court justice Hugo Black to hasten delivery of the mandate implementing the Supreme Court’s 13 November decision. On 19 November, Black refuses to expedite the order. |
| 18 Nov | King is awarded in absentia the Sigma Phi chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity’s Citizen of the Year award at Dexter. King delivers a Men’s Day sermon at Mt. Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. |
| 19 Nov | King delivers the opening remarks at an MIA mass meeting at Beulah Baptist Church. |
| 1 Dec | Liberation publishes “We Are Still Walking.” |
| 3 Dec | At Holt Street Baptist Church, King delivers the opening address, titled “Facing the Challenge of the New Age,” at the MIA’s weeklong Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change. |
| 4 Dec | King offers remarks at a public forum held at Bethel Baptist Church, part of the weeklong Institute on Nonviolence. |
| 5 Dec | On the first anniversary of the bus boycott, King presides over an institute seminar on “Nonviolence and the Social Gospel.” Coretta Scott King speaks and sings at a “Salute to Montgomery” concert in New York City, sponsored by In Friendship to benefit the MIA and other struggles in the South. |
| 6 Dec | In Washington, D.C., King attends an Alpha Phi Alpha executive board meeting and delivers three speeches: “Remember Who You Are,” at a Day of Prayer service at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Chapel; “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” at the annual Student Christian Association dinner; and “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” at an NAACP gathering at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church. |
| 7 Dec | The Dorie Miller Memorial Foundation in Chicago awards its annual achievement award to King in absentia. |
| 9 Dec | King presides, and J. H. Jackson gives the address at the closing mass meeting of the Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change at First Baptist Church. Vernon H. Johns preaches at the seventy-ninth anniversary of Dexter. |
| 10 Dec | King gives a deposition on an 11 July train station incident with a Montgomery police officer. US Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., meets with thirty-three US district attorneys in a daylong conference at which he calls for “voluntary compliance” by carriers with the Supreme Court’s 13 November ruling. The Supreme Court delays hearing petitions from Birmingham and the state of Alabama contesting the ruling. |
| 11 Dec | King speaks at a United Negro College Fund symposium, “The Negro Southerner Speaks,” at the Hunter College Assembly Hall in New York. He later appears on the NBC radio show “Tex and Jinx” with Carl Rowan. |
| 15 Dec | King speaks on “Desegregation and the Future” at the annual meeting of the National Committee for Rural Schools in New York. |
| 17 Dec | The US Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s final appeal. |
| 19 Dec | Anonymous leaflets are distributed throughout Montgomery’s black community, asking residents to rebel against the leadership of the boycott. |
| 20 Dec | The Supreme Court bus desegregation mandate arrives at Judge Johnson’s office. US marshals deliver writs of injunction to Montgomery city officials. Judge Jones dissolves his injunction against Montgomery bus integration and rebukes the Supreme Court. Later that day, King presides over MIA meetings at Holt Street Baptist and St. John AME Churches, during which attendees vote to end the boycott. |
| 21 Dec | Montgomery City Lines resumes full service on all routes. King, Abernathy, Nixon, and Smiley are among the first passengers to seat themselves in the section formerly reserved for whites. The first act of violence involves a black woman who is slapped by a white youth as she leaves a bus. |
| 23 Dec | A shotgun blast is fired into the King home. King informs his congregants of the incident at morning services and later speaks at an MIA mass meeting at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church. |
| 24 Dec | Several white men beat a fifteen-year-old black woman at a bus stop. Tallahassee’s Inter-Civic Council suspends its bus boycott and attempts to desegregate the city buses. Tallahassee’s city commission directs the bus company to enforce segregation on its buses. |
| 25 Dec | In Birmingham, the home of Shuttlesworth is bombed. |
| 26 Dec | Two Montgomery buses are targeted by snipers. In Birmingham, Shuttlesworth integrates white sections of buses with two hundred participants. Police arrest more than twenty people for violating segregation laws. At a mass meeting that evening, Birmingham bus protesters vote to continue their activities after Shuttlesworth reads a telegram from King. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights files a suit in federal court to desegregate Birmingham’s buses. Tallahassee suspends the bus company’s franchise after Steele and others attempt to integrate buses. |
| 28 Dec | King is the guest speaker at a town meeting held at the Delta Sigma Theta sorority’s annual national convention in Detroit. He also appears on the United Auto Worker television program “Telescope.” Rosa Jordan, a pregnant black Montgomery resident, is shot while riding a bus. Police Commissioner Sellers orders all bus runs suspended for the rest of the night. |
| 29 Dec | King delivers a speech at the Omega Psi Phi fraternity annual convention at Morgan State College in Baltimore and receives its Citizen of the Year award. While there, King meets with Harris Wofford, Stanley Levison, and Rustin. Following four shooting incidents, the Montgomery city commission orders a halt to after-dark bus service for the remainder of the holiday weekend. |
| 31 Dec | A Montgomery bus is the target of another sniper attack. Police Commissioner Sellers announces the addition of twenty new officers to the police force. |
In this Publication
From Martin Luther King, Sr.
King, Martin Luther
January 26, 1956
Publisher
University of California Press
Publication Date
1997