Let the Trumpet Sound

by Stephen B. Oates

  In mid-December, a white woman named Juliette Morgan published a letter in the Montgomery Advertiser. “The Negroes of Montgomery,” she wrote, “seem to have taken a lesson from Gandhi—and our own Thoreau, who influenced Gandhi. Their own task is greater than Gandhi’s, however, for they have greater prejudice to overcome.

  “One feels that history is being made in Montgomery these days, the most important in her career. It is hard to imagine a soul so dead, a heart so hard, a vision so blinded and provincial as not to be moved with admiration at the quiet dignity, discipline and dedication with which the Negroes have conducted their boycott.”

  When King and his colleagues read this, they wanted to know who Juliette Morgan was. On investigation, they found that she was a young white librarian who came from an old Alabama family and who lived alone with her mother. Her comments about Gandhi set King to thinking. There were distinct parallels between the Montgomery bus boycott and Gandhi’s struggle in India. What Gandhi accomplished there—freedom and justice without a legacy of bitterness—was precisely what King desired here in Montgomery. With the help of several pacifists and Christian socialists, who hurried to Montgomery to contribute ideas about Gandhi and nonviolent direct action, King set about fashioning a philosophy for the bus protest, one that derived largely from the social philosophy he had forged at Crozer and Boston University. Here at last was a chance to translate his own theoretical concepts into practical action.

  King imparted his philosophy at twice-weekly mass meetings, black Montgomery’s unique contribution to American Negro protest. King himself stressed the significance of the mass meetings: they cut across class lines, he said, and brought “the Ph.D.’s, the M.D.’s, and the No D’s” together in a common cause, binding the Negro community together as no other civil-rights action had ever done. For the people, the mass meetings became the focal point of the protest, affording them an opportunity, said one observer, “to give vent to what they had felt so long.” The meetings would begin at 7 P.M., with songs and prayers and Scripture readings, committee reports, and pep talks by the MIA ministers. Then King, the president of the movement, the man everyone came to hear, would orate on nonviolence, indicating what he had learned in his intellectual odyssey in college. As he spoke, he would plant his short legs firmly apart and shift his weight from one foot to another. To stress a point, he would rise up on the balls of his feet and use his fingers “in little illustrative gestures.”

  “One of the great glories of American democracy is that we have the right to protest for rights,” King would say. “This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces, using the method of passive resistance.” And this is resistance, he would insist, it is not stagnant passivity, a “do-nothing” method. “It is not passive nonresistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil.” And it is not a method for cowards. Gandhi said that if somebody uses it because he’s afraid, he’s not truly nonviolent. Really, nonviolence is the way of the strong.

  We have to resist because “freedom is never given to anybody. For the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there. He never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance comes. We’ve got to keep on keepin’ on, in order to gain freedom. It is not done voluntarily. It is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are oppressed.”

  “I want young men and young women who are not alive today but who will come into this world, with new privileges and new opportunities, I want them to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing for them.”

  But to gain these principles “within the framework of the American democratic set-up,” we must eschew violence at all costs. For us, violence is both impractical and immoral. Remember that “he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Moreover, “to meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.” We are asking the white man to open himself to the gift that God has given him for brotherhood.

  Our campaign is not against individuals but against the forces of evil in the world. The basic tension here is not between Negroes and whites, but between justice and injustice. “And if there is a victory, it will be a victory not merely for fifty thousand Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light.”

  King would quote Gandhi: “Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood.” The same must be true of us, King would say, because “unearned suffering is redemptive.” It avoids the “tragic bitterness” that comes from hate and transforms resister and oppressor alike. “Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”

  When we say “love your enemies,” we do not mean to love them as a friend or an intimate. We mean what the Greeks called agape—a disinterested love for all mankind. This love is our regulating ideal and the beloved community our ultimate goal. As we struggle here in Montgomery, we are cognizant that we have cosmic companionship and that the universe bends toward justice. We are moving “from the black night of segregation to the bright daybreak of joy,” “from the midnight of Egyptian captivity to the glittering light of Canaan freedom.”

  As King spoke in a singsong cadence, his followers would cry and clap and sway, carried along by the magic of his oratory. It was in the mass meetings that King discovered what extraordinary power he possessed as an orator. His rich religious imagery reached deep into the Negro psyche, for religion had been black people’s main source of strength and survival since slavery days. Yet “he has that Baptist hum which makes what is said only as important as how it is said,” as one writer put it. His delivery was “like a narrative poem,” said a woman journalist who heard him. “His elocution has the beauty and polish of Roland Hayes singing a spiritual.” She thought his voice had such depths of tenderness and sincerity that it could “charm your heart right out of your body.” He was so sincere, in fact, that he could make unlettered folk respond to a quotation from Hegel or St. Thomas Aquinas. “I don’t know what that boy talkin’ about,” said one woman, “but I sure like the way he sounds.” To churchwomen, he seemed a saint sent by the Lord Himself. “When I hears Dr. King,” one said, “I see angel’s wings flying ’round his head.” Soon the churchwomen were calling him “L. L. J.”—“Little Lord Jesus.”

  Because of their enormous respect for King, most of the boycotters agreed to try nonviolence as an experiment. Inevitably there were those who argued that they should “kill off” a few whites because that was “the only language these white folks will understand.” But King persuaded the vast majority of Negroes to try nonviolence as a method, even if they did not accept it as a way of life.

  AFTER THE FIRST MEETING with the city fathers, King and his colleagues had wired the parent firm of the Montgomery bus lines, whose headquarters were in Chicago, and urged it to send down a representative; maybe he could induce the city fathers to listen to reason. The company president replied that an official would be in Montgomery in a few days. King heard nothing more about the matter until December 15, when a white friend told him that one C. K. Totten of the National City Lines had been in town for two days. He hadn’t bothered to contact King or any other local Negro.

  Still, King struggled not to be bitter. When the mayor called a second meeting on Saturday, December 17, King and his associates went to City Hall in good faith. Mayor Gayle marched into the room with a retinue of whites: Totten (who at first seemed friendly enough), the city commissioners, four representatives of the bus lines, and the mayor’s all-white citizens’ committ
ee, which included Reverend E. Stanley Frazier of the St. James Methodist Church. To demonstrate their willingness to negotiate, King and the MIA had modified their demand about Negro drivers: the bus company need not hire them immediately. But it must promise to take them on as vacancies occurred.

  Totten rose to speak for the bus company. To King’s shock, he took Crenshaw’s position, dwelling at length on how the MIA demands violated local law. Had the man had a southern accent, King would have sworn he was Crenshaw.

  When Totten finished, King jumped up. “Mr. Totten has not been fair in his assertions. He has made a statement that is completely biased. In spite of the fact that he was asked to come to Montgomery by the MIA, he has not done the Negro community the simple courtesy of hearing their grievances. The least that all of us can do in our deliberations is to be honest and fair.”

  King’s Negro colleagues chorused “amen.” Totten shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Then Reverend Frazier began speaking, and King listened with morbid fascination. Frazier was one of the most outspoken segregationists in the Methodist Church, “a tall, distinguished-looking man,” King thought, “the quintessence of dignity.” He was lecturing the Negroes on the frailties of human nature and the error of their ways. They had strayed from the path of righteousness, he said, led into darkness by ministers of the gospel. The task of Christian preachers was to lead men’s souls to God, not to sow confusion by getting enmeshed in social problems. With the Christmas season approaching, all of them—whites and Negroes alike—must focus their attention on the Babe of Bethlehem. This the Negro preachers must tell their flocks. They must tell them to end the boycott and guide them “to a glorious experience of the Christian faith.”

  When he finished, Gayle and the other whites looked smug and satisfied. How could the Negroes question the authority of the Scriptures? King stood and said. “We too know the Jesus that the minister just referred to. We have had an experience with him, and we believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal. We are only doing in a minor way what Gandhi did in India; and certainly no one referred to him as an unrepentant sinner; he is considered by many a saint.

  “We have been talking a great deal this morning about customs. It has been affirmed that any change in present conditions would mean going against the ‘cherished customs’ of our community. But if the customs are wrong we have every reason in the world to change them. The decision which we must make now is whether we will give our allegiance to outmoded and unjust customs or to the ethical demands of the universe. As Christians we owe our ultimate allegiance to God and His Will, rather than to man and his folkways.”

  To white men accustomed to dealing with obsequious Negroes, King must have seemed an aberration. When the talking was over, the mayor appointed an interracial committee of eight whites and eight Negroes to convene on Monday morning, then adjourned the meeting.

  King drove home with his mind on Frazier. “How firmly he believed in the position he was taking,” King thought. “He would probably never change now; time-worn traditions had become too crystallized in his soul. The ‘isness’ of segregation had for him become one with the ‘oughtness’ of moral law.” Though King believed that history and religion both proved Frazier wrong, he could not help but admire the man’s zeal and sincerity. “Why is it,” King asked himself, “that the whites who believe in integration are so often less eloquent, less positive, in their testimony than the segregationists?” It was a tragedy of history that the “children of darkness” were often more determined and forceful than the “children of light.”

  It troubled him, too, that the children of darkness numbered so many white preachers. Because the boycott appealed to the Christian conscience, King had expected white ministers to become the Negroes’ allies and even take their case to the white power structure. But only Robert Graetz, a slender, sandy-haired West Virginian who pastored Montgomery’s Negro Lutheran Church, had joined the MIA. King thought how whites had called him a “nigger lover,” slashed his automobile tires, poured sugar into his gas tank, and wished him a nigger brother-in-law. He thought about how Graetz had tried to reason with white preachers and priests in town—and about his own appeals to them. But “most folded their hands—and some even took stands against us,” as Frazier had done. King felt “chastened and disillusioned.” Expecting the support of white ministers, he decided, was “the most pervasive mistake I have ever made.”

  On Monday morning, King was on hand for the meeting of the mayor’s interracial committee. A man was present he had not seen before. “That is Luther Ingalls,” the Negroes whispered, “secretary of the Montgomery White Citizens’ Council.” King was indignant. “We will never solve this problem so long as there are persons on the committee whose public pronouncements are anti-Negro,” he cried.

  “He has as much right to be on the committee as you do,” a white preacher snapped. “You have a definite point of view and you are on it.”

  The whites now ganged up on King. You are the main stumbling block to a resolution of this problem. You are causing all the trouble with your insults, accusing us of lacking open minds. King backpedaled. He was only referring to those on the committee who were anti-Negro. Why were his Negro colleagues not standing with him? He felt isolated and terrible. Then suddenly Abernathy was on the floor. Dear Ralph. Reverend King, Abernathy said, spoke for the entire Negro delegation in the matter of Mr. Ingalls. King noticed that the whites looked disappointed. So that was it. This had all been a ruse to divide the Negro leaders and perhaps sabotage the boycott. But Abernathy’s statement had foiled the effort. There was some empty talk after that, then the white chairman closed the session, promising to call another. He never did.

  King drove home knowing that negotiations were finished. He felt depressed, borne down by a heavy guilt for getting angry at the meeting. “You must not harbor anger,” he admonished himself. “You must be willing to suffer the anger of the opponent, and yet not return anger. No matter how emotional your opponents are, you must be calm.” He even phoned a white committee member and apologized for any misunderstanding he might have caused.

  With the failure of negotiations, the city fathers grasped for scapegoats. The mayor officially charged that “outside agitators” were “stirring this thing up,” and claimed in a burst of mendacity that he had offered the Negroes “equal accommodations and everything else. But they want integration—that’s the whole thing.” They “are fighting to destroy our social fabric.” They “are laughing at white people behind their backs.” Other white officials also maintained that “Negro radicals,” “extremists,” and “Communists” were running the boycott. And they had better watch out, editorialized the Montgomery Advertiser, because “the white man’s economic artillery is far superior, better emplaced, and commanded by more experienced gunners.”

  Bob Graetz thought white leaders were flustered, unable to deal with “our love campaign.” And King, once he considered the true meaning of the term, decided that he liked being called an extremist. Was not Christ an extremist for love? he asked. Were not the early Christians called “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators”? Still, he cautioned his followers to “steer clear of any Communist infiltration.” It was a time of anti-Communist hysteria across the land, and the boycotters must always be on guard and “have no dealings with any Communists.”

  One day a white man came up to King. “For all these years we have been such a peaceful community,” he said; “we have had so much harmony in race relations and then you people have started this movement and boycott, and it has done so much to disturb race relations, and we just don’t love the Negro like we used to love them, because you have destroyed the harmony and the peace that we once had in race relations.”r />
  “Sir,” King retorted, “you have never had real peace in Montgomery. You have had a sort of negative peace in which the Negro too often accepted his state of subordination. But this is not true peace. True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. The tension we see in Montgomery today is the necessary tension that comes when the oppressed rise up and start to move forward toward a permanent, positive peace.”

  Christmas came on. Across Montgomery, Christmas trees glimmered in white and Negro homes, and white and Negro churches rang with carols, stories about Bethlehem, and prayers for “Peace on Earth, good will toward men.” In the bustle of last-minute shopping, boycotting blacks sang an official protest song composed by a Negro bandleader:

  Ain’t gonna ride them busses no more

  Ain’t gonna ride no more

  Why in the hell don’t the white folk know

  That I ain’t gonna ride no more.

  AFTER CHRISTMAS, whites resorted to psychological warfare to break the boycott, hinting at violence, trying to sow dissension among leaders and followers alike. Whites circulated rumors that King himself was pocketing MIA money, that he had bought himself a big new Cadillac and his wife a Buick station wagon. Prominent whites also told older, more established Negro preachers that their positions had been usurped by “these young upstarts” and that they should be the protest leaders. By now, the boycott was commanding national attention and thrusting King into the headlines. And this reactivated the “self-defeating rivalries” that had afflicted the black community before the protest. Jealous of King and hostile to seminary-trained ministers in general, a lot of “anti-intellectual” preachers, who were called to the pulpit by divine inspiration, griped and groaned that King was using the movement to get attention and enrich himself.