MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The only white minister to support the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott has died. The Rev. Robert Graetz was 92.
A family spokesman says Graetz died Sunday of complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Montgomery surrounded by his wife, family and friends.
Graetz was the minister of the majority-Black Trinity Lutheran Evangelical Church in Montgomery and became the only local white clergyman to publicly support the historic boycott in 1955. The Montgomery parsonage where the Graetzes lived was bombed in 1957 in a wave of attacks on civil rights leaders and churches.