This month marks seventy years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a muncipal bus to a white passenger on December first of 1955. Four days later the boycott began. The event made both Parks and Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior into international figures. A lot has been said and reported on the Montgomery Boycott. But, only a few can say they were there. APR student reporter Torin Daniel has more on someone who planned the boycott and one witness who saw it.
“The greatest planning I did, as far as planning for a a an event, was the planning that Joanne and I made in her living room for the Montgomery bus boycott,” said Fred Gray.
He was the attorney to both MLK and Rosa Parks. As far as the Montgomery Bus Boycott was concerned, Gray was in the middle of it. The Joanne Robinson he referred to, plays a big role later in this story, APR News spoke with gray about the Montgomery Bus Boycott back in 2018 This is the first time this audio has been heard in public.
“There's some misunderstanding on some people, part because some people think he came to Montgomery to start a civil rights movement,” Gray continued.
He was referring to his client, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. He recalled how choosing King to lead the bus boycott wasn't guaranteed. Two other names came up, Ed Lewis and Rufus Nixon. They were both well known civil rights activists. Remember the Joanne Robinson that Fred Gray mentioned earlier. He says she was the group leader who made her feelings known.
“Joanne said, ‘Well, why don't we get my pastor, Martin Luther King. He has not been involved in civil rights activities. He haven't been here long, but one thing he can do, he can move people with his words,’” Gray recalled.
“He not only could speak, but he was a very good listener, and he had a good sense of humor, even to the extent of telling some jokes sometimes that he wouldn't be able to tell in the pulpit. But he was a very good practical person,’ Gray continued.
“One of the best things we decided to do was to ask the people just to stay off of the bus for one day. Most people can make arrangements to get to where they need to go for a day,” Gray recalled.
The problem of transporting people during the longer boycott was solved by enlisting black owned funeral homes in Montgomery. They had cars and offered rides to African American city residents who needed a way to get around town, along with red gray APR news heard from another Montgomery resident with a unique relationship to Dr King.
APR listeners first met Nelson Mauldin in 2018 we visited the barber shop he owned in the 1950s it was here and who he first met in 1954 one year before the bus boycott. That's the point.
“Well, the first thing it came in the shop like any new customer,” said Nelson Mauldin, Dr King's barber in Montgomery.
“When I finished cutting his hair. I gave him the mirror to say it like his haircut. So he told me, pretty good. So when you tell a barber pretty good, that was an insult,” Malden said.
Dr King became a regular in Maldon's barber chair, and he recalled the first day of the Montgomery bus boycott.
“Oh, yeah. Well, you could tell, because the first day the boycott started, we was in the barber shop, and one of the customers a heck on the bus, and we all ran to the wonder to see there was a black man standing on the corner across the street from the barber shop. And we looked, we couldn't see what the man got on and off,” Malden said. “When the bus pulled off, the man was still standing. We saw, Oh, Lord, awake. We thought (boxer) Joe Lewis had knocked out Max Schmelling.
381 days later, King called for an end to the boycott. The event became engraved in civil rights history, and Fred Gray says, King became an international figure.
“…and all of it happened here in Montgomery, Alabama, and Dr King was serving as spokesman of the group during the Montgomery bus boycott. And I'm happy that I served as his legal advisor.
