Montgomery Alabama's Rev. Martin Luther King
(6 of 10)
When the false armistice failed, Mayor Tacky Gayle ordered a get-tough policy. Gayle and his city commissioners made a great show of joining the White Citizens' Council. (Said Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers: "I wouldn't trade my Southern birthright for 100 Negro votes.") Police harassment followed: King was arrested for speeding; Negro car-pool drivers were haled into court for trivial violations.
Worst of all, the whites' lunatic fringe began to take over. A letter addressed simply to "Nigger Preacher" was promptly delivered to Martin King. Up to 25 profanity-laced telephone calls a day came to the King home. Sometimes there was only the hawk of a throat and the splash of spittle against the ear piece. Montgomery was building toward the one thing that Martjn King wanted most to avoid: a violent blowup.
"One night," says King, "after many threatening and annoying phone calls, I went into the kitchen and tried to forget it all. I found myself praying out loud, and I laid my life bare. I remember saying, 'I'm here, taking a stand, and I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.' " From somewhere came the answer: stand for truth, stand for righteousness; God is at your side. Says Martin King: "I have not known fear since."
His mettle was soon tested. At 9:15 one night a year ago, King was speaking at a mass meeting; Coretta King was talking to a friend in the living room of the parsonage at 309 South Jackson Street. Coretta heard a thud on the porch and thought it was a brick, nothing particularly frightening around the King home during that period. She and the friend moved to a back room to continue their conversation—and a dynamite bomb went off, filling the vacant living room with a hail of broken glass.
"Be Peaceful." Mayor Gayle and Police Commissioner Sellers rushed out with the cops to answer the alarm and found themselves up against a Negro crowd in the ugliest sort of mood. King's nonviolent teachings had sunk deep (since the boycott began, Montgomery's crimes of violence by Negroes have decreased by an estimated 20%), but at this moment the impulse to answer white violence with Negro violence seemed irresistible. A growl of fury came from the Negro crowd; there was a forward surge that left no doubt in the mind of anyone present that Mayor Gayle and his aides were in danger. A white man rushed inside the parsonage and begged Martin King, who had been hastily summoned from his mass meeting, to stop his followers. King did.
"Please be peaceful," he said from the shattered front porch. "We believe in law and order. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them. I did not start this boycott. I was asked by you to serve as your spokesman. I want it to be known the length and breadth of the land that if I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop, for what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just—and God is with us."