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"The Number One Leader"
In LATE 1957, King and an associate were walking through the Atlanta airport on their way to a flight for Montgomery. Looking for a rest room, King saw two doors, one labeled Men, the other Colored. He went into the one marked Men. The whites inside paid him no attention, but the lavatory's black attendant was deeply upset. "Colored men don't come in here, "he said. When King did not depart, the attendant walked toward him, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, "You go in the colored room across the hall. "King ignored him. Finally, he turned to the despairing attendant and asked, "Do you mean that every time you need to go to the bathroom you go out of here and all the way to that other room?" "Yes, sir. That's the place for colored." Back in the airport corridor, King told his friend what had happened in the rest room. Shaking his head, the 28-year-old minister said, "That's the way most of the Negroes of Montgomery acted before the boycott." The boycott changed things, unleashing a powerful sense of pride and accomplishment within the black community. For the first time in anyone's memory, blacks, by themselves, had peacefully, successfully overcome segregation. It was a landmark victory, but one that had flaws and limits. A ruling by the Supreme Court, after all, was what saved the day. Without the court's decision, the city probably would have put the car pool out of business and broken the boycott. Furthermore, the movement that sought to love its enemies had not converted many whites. Instead, white Montgomery remained intolerant and prone to terrorism. Even though the boycott had ended, the violence persisted. Three days after Christmas 1956, white thugs opened fire on buses all over town, and in early Janauary 1957, must say to whites, "We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws." By 1957, King's message was reaching an audience that stretched far beyond Montgomery. The bus boycott had captured national attention and had transformed its leader into a celebrated spokesman for civil rights. Nearly every delivery of the mail to the Dexter Avenue Church contained for King speaking invitations, job offers from churches and universities, and publishers' proposals for books. In February 1957, he gained the ultimate stamp of celebrity: His picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine. On the inside pages, readers found a flattering profile of "this scholarly Negro Baptist minister." Fame never went to King's head, and he declined nearly all of the offers. But one invitation he accepted eagerly. The leaders of the new African nation of Ghana requested he attend its independence day ceremonies. For King, the emergence of independent nantions in Africa was immensely important. The struggle of American blacks against segregation, in his view, was part of the worldwide quest of oppressed colonial people for liberation. In Ghana, he met the official American representative, Vice-president Richard M. Nixon. "I'm very glad to meet you here," he told Nixon, "but I want you to come and visit us down in Alabama where we are seeking the same kind of freedom Ghana is celebrating." Neither Nixon nor President Dwight D. Eisenhower came to Alabama to denounce segregation. But in 1957, there came a glimmer of hope. Early in the yearm the Eisenhower administration sent to Congress a civil rights bill, the first of the 20th century. In its original form, the measure provided for a civil rights commission to investigate abuse against blacks and permitted the Department of Justice to intervene on behalf of those who right to vote was denied by southern officials. |
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This intel was contributed by bjk48
bjk48
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May, 2012
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