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
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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-
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THO USANDS GATHERED TO HEAR Dr. King Deliver his fam ous "I
Have a Dream" speech.
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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.
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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
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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.
.
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SAFEWAY