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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 12, 1989)
January 12, 1989 Parting The Waters Dr. Martin Luther King's Chronology Continued From Pago 1 Continued From Pago 6 eluding Jo Ann Robinson, a proles sor of English at Alabam a State. She was am ong the leaders of the wom en's group who served on the Rev. Martin Luther King's new politi cal affairs com m ittee at Dexter Ave nue Baptist Church. Robinson called her closest friends on the W omen's Political Council. All of them responded like firefighters to an alarm. This was it. Robinson and her friends met about midnight at their offices at Alabama State, each under the pretext of grading exams. They drafted a letter of protest. They revised the letter repeatedly, as ideas occurred to them. “ Until we do something to stop these arrests, they will continue," the women wrote. “The next tim e it may be you, or you or you. This w om an’s case will com e up M onday. W e are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses on Monday in protest of the arrest and trial." Robinson decided to call E.D. Nixon to let him know what they were doing. He instantly approved Robinson’s idea of the one-day bus boycott, saying that he had something like that in mind himself. He told her that he planned to summon M ontgom ery’s leading Negroes to a planning meet ing the very next day, at which both “ You know, my friends, there comes a time, ” he cried, “when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. ” the legal defense and the boycott would be organized. Robinson was the first to know. About 50 of the Negro leaders assem bled in the basem ent of King’s church w here after a protracted and often disorderly argum ent about whether o r not to allow debate, they approved the plans more or less as Nixon had laid them out in advance. All undertook to spread the word. Nixon was up before dawn on Monday morning. So w ere the Kings, M.L. drinking coffee and his wife, Coretta, keeping watch at the front window, nervously waiting to see the first m orning bus. W hen she saw the headlights cutting through the dark ness, she called out to her husband and they watched it roll by together. The bus w as empty! The early morning special on the South Jackson line, which was nor mally full o f Negro maids on their way to work, still had its groaning engine and squeaky brakes, but it was an empty shell. So was the next bus, and the next. In spite of the bitter m orning cold, their fear of white people and their d e s p e ra te n e e d fo r w a g e s , Montgom ery Negroes w ere turning the City Bus Lines into a ghost fleet. King, astonished and overjoyed, jumped into his car to see whether the response was the same elsewhere in the city. It was. He drove around for several hours, watching buses pass by carrying handfuls of white passengers. After Rosa Parks was convicted that morning, E.D. Nixon w alked out of the courtroom to post bond for her release. The sight that greeted him in the courthouse hallway shocked him almost as m uch as the em pty buses at dawn: a crowd of som e 500 Ne groes jam m ed the corridor, spilling back through doors and down the steps into the street. Nixon, who was accustom ed to find there only a few relatives of the accused, knew that the em pty buses had been no fluke. The jostling, and the sight of still more worried-looking policemen with All the Negro leaders knew it long before they reassem bled that after noon to plan a mass meeting. That evening at Holt Street Baptist Church they formed the Montgomery Improve ment Association, elected King its president, and decided to extend the bus boycott indefinitely. That evening a crowd of about 15,000 people surrounded the packed Holt Street Baptist Church as King took the pulpit. He stood silently for a moment. When he greeted the enormous crowd of strangers, who w ere packed in the balconies and aisles, peering in through the windows and upward from seats on the floor, he spoke in a deep voice, stressing his diction in a slow introductory cadence. "W e are here this evening--for serious business," he said, in even pulses, rising and then falling in pitch. W hen he paused, only one or two “ yes" responses cam e up from the crowd, and they w ere quiet ones. It was a throng of shouters, he could see, but they were waiting to see where he would take them. "You know, my friends, there comes a time,” he cried, “when people get tired of being tram pled over by the iron feet of oppression." A flock of “ yeses” w ere-com ing back at him when suddenly the individual re sponses dissolved into a rising cheer and applause exploded beneath the c h e e r-a ll within the space of a sec ond. That startling noise rolled on and on, like a wave that refused to break, and just when it seem ed that the roar must finally weaken, a w all of sound cam e in from the enorm ous crowd outdoors to push the volum e still higher. Thunder seem ed to be added to the lower re g iste r-th e sound of feet stomping on the wooden floor—until the loudness became something that was not so m uch heard as it was sensed by vibrations in the lungs. The giant cloud of noise shook the building and refused to go away. One sentence had set it loose somehow, pushing the call-and-response of the Negro church service past the din of a political rally and on to something else that King had never known be fore. As the noise finally fell back, King's voice rose above it to fire again. “ There com es a tim e, m y friends, when people get tired of being thrown across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair,” he declared. “There com es a tim e when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight o f life's July, and left stand ing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November. T h e re ..." King was m aking a new run, but the crowd drowned him out. No one could tell w hether the roar cam e in response to the nerve he had touched, or sim ply out of pride in a speaker from whose tongue such rhetoric rolled so easily. The noise swelled until King cut through it to m ove past a point of unbearable tension. “ If we are w rong- Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dream er and never cam e dow n to earth I If we are w ro n g - justice is a lie." This was too much. He had to wait som e tim e before delivering his soar ing conclusion, in a flight of anger mixed with rapture: “ A nd we are determ ined here in M ontgom ery-to w ork and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream I" The audience all but smothered this passage from Amos, the lowly herdsm an prophet of Israel, who, along with the priestly Isaiah, was King’s favorite biblical authority on justice. The applause continued as King m ade his way out of the church, with people reaching to touch him. Dexter members marveled. The boycott was on. King would work on his timing, but his oratory had just m ade him forever a public person. In the few short m inutes of his first political address, a power of com m union em erged from him that would speak inexorably to strangers who would both love and revile him, like all prophets. He was 26, and had not quite 12 years and four months to live. The bus boycott lasted more than a year. It was not until Dec. 21,1956, the day afterthe U S. Suprem e Court notified Montgomery officials that their bus segregation law was unconstitu tional, that Negroes would again ride. shotguns, rattled even Nixon tem po rarily. He tried to disperse the crowd, promising to bring Rosa Parks out side unharm ed as soon as the bond was signed. Som e voices shouted back that the crowd would storm the courthouse to rescue both Parks and Nixon if they did not emerge within a Dialrlbutad by Loa Ang«l«« Tim«« few minutes. Something was new in Syndicate Montgomery. 1961 January 30: Dexter Scott, the Kings' third child, is born. M ay 4: The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes the first group of Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders, intent on integrating inter state buses, leaves Washington, D.C., by Greyhound bus shortly ~ '• ’• , ."C*. ’ / after the Supreme Court has out lawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals. 1962 September 20: James Mere dith makes his first attempt to en roll at the University of Mississippi. 1963 M arch 28: Bernice Albertine, the Kings' fourth child, is born. M arch-A pril: Sit-in demonstrations are held in Birmingham to protest segregation of eating facilities. Dr. King is arrested during the demon stration. A p ril 16: Dr. King writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" while imprisoned for demonstrating. May 3, 4, 5: Eugene "B u ll" Connor, director of public safety of Birming ham, orders the use of police dogs and fire hoses on the marching pro testors. May 20: The Supreme Court of the United States rules Birmingham's segregation ordinan- ■ FT- * w ♦ I * • JF AS ?** á ¿** THO USANDS GATHERED TO HEAR Dr. King Deliver his fam ous "I Have a Dream" speech. '.I.' t • • .' ” ■ ' f . 4 ' - .'I He is actually enrolled by Supreme Court order and is escorted onto the Oxford, Mississippi campus by U.S. marshals on October 1. October 16: Dr. King meets with President Kennedy at the White House for a one-hour conference. ■. . ’ ' ' « . ( 3 » .•• f / . * » Portland Observer • Page 11 King's book "Strength to Love" is published. June 11: Governor George C. Wallace tries to stop the court-ordered integration of the University of Alabama by "standing in the schoolhouse door" and per sonally refusing entrance to black students. June 12: Medgar Evers is assassinated in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. A ugust 28: In Washington, D.C., the March on Washington is held. Dr. King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. November 22: Presi dent Kennedy is assassinated in Dal las, Texas. 1964 M arch 7: Bloody Sunday. About 650 marchers in Selma were attacked by police wielding tear gas, clubs and bullwhips. The as sault, recorded by the national ■ . V W . '- X ' Î 7 , ■A.;'" v' V ‘ V • - ? • . Martin Luther King was nth us from 1929 to 1968. W\ m that time he inspired In America— an d the wod' with his vision an d his dream. We re proud to honor this extraordinary m an an d do every thing we a m to help keep the dream alive. . <.. «.• •(. .. . "• !. 11 i > ’ i SAFEWAY