The Office of Student Diversity asks that you pause for a moment today to reflect upon the legacy of Dr. King.

The annual celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthdate continues to arouse excitement or outrage as people honor  his accomplishments and debate his foibles. Yet it is also an opportunity for us to remember the crucial role he played in fostering a civil rights movement that continues to transform American society. King first emerged as a leader of national prominence in 1955. As the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, he agreed to lead a city-wide boycott against the municipal bus system.

Like many other southern cities, Montgomery had a local ordinance that required blacks to sit in the back of buses and to give up their seat to whites. The boycott was triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a middle-aged black seamstress and long-time critic of segregation who served as secretary of the local NAACP chapter. Tired after a long day’s work, she boarded a city bus on December 1. Several stops later, the  bus driver ordered her to stand so that a white rider could  take her seat. She refused. The driver stopped the bus and warned Parks that he was “going to have you arrested.” She replied, “You may do so.” Parks later explained that she wanted to discover “once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen.” And besides, she added,  “my feet hurt.”

Word of Parks’s arrest raced through the African-American community. By midnight, black leaders decided to organize a massive boycott of the bus system. E. D. Nixon, a railroad porter, union leader, and former president of the state and local NAACP, had been looking for the right moment to organize a mass protest, and the arrest of Parks, a beloved community leader, provided the needed catalyst. While Nixon phoned area ministers to enlist their support, student and faculty volunteers from Alabama State University stayed up all night to produce 35,000 flyers denouncing the arrest and urging support for the boycott.

On December 5, the successful first day of the bus boycott, representatives of churches, neighborhood organizations, and political clubs met to assess the situation. After heated debate, they all agreed to endorse the boycott and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to coordinate the mass protest. The group elected the untested King to serve as its president.

Born in Atlanta, the grandson of a slave and the son of a prominent minister, King was intelligent, courageous, and charismatic. He was also an eloquent, passionate speaker. Drawing upon the Bible, the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and the teachings of India’s Mahatma Gandhi, he had developed a philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience. Rosa Parks’ refusal to turn over her bus seat was a perfect example of such nonviolent resistance.

On the night of December 5, King addressed a mass meeting at a downtown church. Thousands of blacks attended, clogging the church and spilling out onto the grounds outside. King delivered a riveting speech. He first expressed the frustration of his listeners who had been “intimidated, humiliated, and oppressed because of the sheer fact that they were Negroes.” But now they were fighting back. King explained that “there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.”

The huge audience began shouting “Yes” in unison and stomping their feet in approval. Once they quieted down, King continued, assuring the public that “we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that.” The only weapon they would use would be the “weapon of protest.” King concluded by urging his listeners to remember their Christian principles as they continued the boycott. “If you protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, future historians will say, ‘There lived a great people—a black people—who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’”

The Montgomery boycott achieved stunning solidarity. Ridership on the bus system plummeted. Blacks organized carpools, used black-owned taxis, or hitchhiked to work or to shop. Many white supporters provided rides. A few rode horses or mules. Such an unprecedented mass protest infuriated many whites. Policemen harassed and ticketed black carpools, and white thugs assaulted hitchhikers.

During the boycott, King was arrested twice and threatened often. A few weeks after the boycott began, someone threw a bomb onto the porch of King’s parsonage. Upon learning of the incident, he hurried home to find his wife Coretta and their infant daughter unharmed. In the street, however, hundreds of vengeful blacks, some of them armed, were threatening to assault whites. King urged the angry bystanders to attack hate with love: “We must love our white brothers no matter what they do to us.” His remarkable magnanimity defused the volatile situation and led the crowd to disperse.

The Montgomery bus boycott had lasted almost a year when the Supreme Court ruled that the city’s segregated bus ordinance was unconstitutional. A few weeks later, on December 21, 1956, Dr. King and the Rev. Glen Smiley, a white minister, shared the front seat of a bus.

But the boycott accomplished much more than ensuring equality of treatment on Montgomery’s 64 buses. It revealed to blacks across the country the power and potential of nonviolent resistance. For thousands of African Americans, hope replaced resignation; action supplanted passivity.

The successful boycott also catapulted young Dr. King into a position of national leadership of the civil rights movement that would earn him the Nobel Peace prize in 1964. In Montgomery, King, Parks, Nixon, and others  showed that deeply embedded social evils could be engaged, resisted, and transformed through moral tenacity and loving opposition.

Yes, King’s birthdate is worth remembering—and his extraordinary achievements are worth honoring.

Narrative by Dr. David Emory Shi
Furman University