Becoming King (6 page)

Few African American men in Montgomery displayed the public courage embodied in Nixon’s rhetoric and actions. His union membership and associated job security as a Pullman porter ensured his job was secure from the retribution of local whites. Having grown up in poverty and poorly educated, Nixon made a special point to connect with the city’s working-class blacks. He understood the significant socioeconomic needs that plagued many of his friends and neighbors. Through his association with Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nixon had learned the power of ordinary people joining together for a common cause. He became their advocate, and worked not only to stir the people to action but to alert professional blacks to the dire financial and social conditions facing many in Montgomery.

Most middle-class African Americans elected to keep their distance from Nixon, however. While he had some degree of economic independence, most of them did not. When Nixon walked the streets of downtown Montgomery, he remembered “some of your so-called big people who are close to the white folks” crossing the street to avoid being seen with him. Donald Jones, in his 1945 assessment of the local NAACP chapter, characterized Nixon as “the strongest man in the community in civic affairs, pretty influential among the rank and file,” but he also had reservations about Nixon. Jones thought that Nixon “fancies himself an amateur detective” who was always trying to demonstrate some injustice
in the courts toward local African Americans. The letters of correspondence between the local branch and the national office of the NAACP during the 1940s help paint a picture of Nixon as a passionate and aggressive leader who would not let the slightest injustice or insult go unchallenged. While Nixon’s tenacity was vital for change to happen in the Jim Crow South, his concern over the minutiae of local branch affairs and concerns could prove wearisome for even the most ardent activists. Even Ella Baker seemed to grow weary of Nixon’s detailed appeals to the national office for rulings to solve local disputes. Baker ended one letter to Nixon concerning the use of branch monies for a USO party for returning World War II veterans: “Nevertheless, I do not believe that the money spent for the veterans’ social should be made a major issue.” Although Nixon’s intensity could prove controversial and threatening and even exhausting to those around him, the local pastor Solomon Seay recognized in him “an entwined combination of courage and wisdom. He was well qualified to be standing at the threshold of a change in the course of history.”
²⁰

Despite his bold public stands, Nixon developed a few connections with whites in Montgomery. As early as 1945, he was part of clandestine interracial gatherings at Dexter Avenue Methodist Church, a white congregation led by Reverend Andrew Turnipseed. The group met in the middle of the night to avoid reprisals. Many of those who gathered—a group that included ASC professor J. E. Pierce, Tuskegee professor Dean Gomillion, and
Southern Farmer
editor Gould Beech—played a role in the 1946 populist-inspired gubernatorial campaign of Jim Folsom, who served as Alabama governor from 1947 to 1951 and again from 1955 to 1959. While Turnipseed was not the only white challenging segregation in Montgomery, he claimed no other Methodist ministers publicly supported his efforts: “The other Methodist preachers here that I could count on was none. They had never been in the stirring of the water of this kind of matter.” While fellow clergy did not support his efforts, a handful of former New Deal Democrats in Montgomery brought a vibrant, if small, white contingent advocating for racial change.
²¹

Following the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, many connected to his administration began to depart the capital, including Aubrey Williams, who had served as the executive director of the National Youth
Administration. Williams returned to his native Alabama to purchase and run, with the financial backing of Chicago department store mogul Marshall Field, the struggling
Southern Farmer
magazine. He enlisted fellow New Dealer Gould Beech to serve as editor of the monthly paper, which they retooled to espouse populist and racially inclusive positions from its headquarters just outside Montgomery.
²²

Given their proximity to the state capital, Williams and Gould could not resist the temptation to get involved in local and state affairs. During one election season, they even worked to find an alternative candidate for the state legislature, which they perceived to be controlled by a racial demagogue. They nominated Steven Busby, an energetic if naïve young candidate. Their goal was for Busby to garner at least 25 percent of the vote, demonstrating the presence of a significant minority of Montgomery residents who were eager for change. In the buildup to the election, Beech spoke with Nixon, who agreed to mobilize the grand total of sixty registered black voters behind their candidate. Beech and Williams rallied the liberals in town, including local labor, and surprisingly Busby won the seat. This small victory demonstrated the latent radicalism in Montgomery that could effect small changes and have an impact, provided reactionaries were unaware of the possible ramifications. Jim Folsom’s two nonconsecutive terms as governor (1947–51, 1955–59) also reveal the appeal of populist candidates in Alabama. Known as a friend of the working class, Folsom reached out to the small number of black voters in the state and refused to engage in racial demagoguery.
²³

Former New Deal Democrats Clifford and Virginia Foster Durr soon joined Williams in Montgomery. Clifford had served as the first director of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Roosevelt, while Virginia had been very active in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) and the movement to abolish the poll tax. Following a brief stint in Denver, the couple returned to their native Alabama. Clifford established a law practice that counted the
Southern Farmer
among its clients. Virginia invested some of her time connecting with other like-minded people in the city, including Nixon and Aubrey Williams.

The racial mores of Virginia Durr’s home state shocked her after spending nearly two decades away. In a letter penned shortly after her return, she described her response to the “steady and continuous” oppression
of African Americans: “It is like seeing a great stone lying on them—but it lies just as heavily on the white people too—and I feel so continually guilty that I am not doing anything about it.” Despite experiencing “constant pain” regarding the racial situation, she believed African Americans were “stirring and they won’t be held down much longer.” As New Deal Democrats who had forged friendships with southern progressives like Myles Horton, James Dombrowski, and Myles Horton, Williams and the Durrs found common ground with Nixon’s agenda to challenge both Jim Crow segregation and economic injustice.
²⁴

Although she felt guilty for not being involved in efforts to challenge segregation, Virginia Durr did develop friendships with a few women, both white and black. An organization called the United Church Women, which held regular interracial prayer meetings in the city, became an important connection point for Durr. Through these meetings, Durr met women like Juliette Morgan, Olive Andrews, and Clara Rutledge.
²⁵

Juliette Morgan was a local white librarian and one of the more outspoken advocates for a more racially inclusive city and state. In an editorial published in the
Montgomery Advertiser,
Morgan voiced support for federal action to combat “discrimination against minority groups.” Noting her opinion was in the minority, she added that “Ministers, some editors, social workers, and educators, and other thinking people are speaking out against the savage old mores of the South, otherwise referred to as ‘our Southern traditions.’” She argued that the Democratic Party slogan “White Supremacy” was “an insult to the colored races” and “a disgrace to the white,” adding that “those who insist that the states can handle civil rights are, for the most part, more concerned with maintaining the status quo than they are in securing civil rights for any minority.” While Montgomery tolerated the few who did not support white supremacy as long as they did not become too vocal, Morgan foreshadowed sentiments that would later be seen as threatening by those committed to segregation.
²⁶

Morgan’s letter drew the attention of James Dombrowski, the president of the Southern Conference Education Fund. He wrote Morgan to inquire about her editorial, asking how she developed such radical views. In her response, Morgan claimed that her opinions were widely shared in Montgomery, but most were “afraid of speaking out.” To support her
claim, she noted that a few of her white friends who worked to educate African Americans told her they could no longer vote under the “white supremacy” banner of the state Democratic Party. Morgan pointed to “two perfectly splendid Episcopal ministers here who are working steadily against prejudice” and “a very fine Methodist minister who never misses a chance.” She was also inspired by Jane Addams’s questions: “Who if not you? When if not now?” Morgan did not simply write about the need for racial changes in Alabama; she got involved. A committed Episcopalian, she participated in the Council on Human Relations organization headed up by her friend and local priest Thomas Thrasher. She also participated in an interracial prayer group organized in part by Olive Andrews.
²⁷

Like Morgan, Andrews became active in challenging the southern way of life by working for integration. While not as outspoken as Morgan, she was very involved in efforts to organize women in the city. Andrews was one of the leaders in the effort to integrate Montgomery’s United Church Women, a program of the National Council of Churches. During the 1940s and 1950s, she was an active member of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Because of her church involvement and thanks to her reputation as a Bible teacher, Andrews received an invitation from Stillman College, a Presbyterian school for African Americans in Tuscaloosa, to teach summer classes. She later recalled her first trip to Stillman: “I went up that year and had just one little part on the program. It was the first time that I had ever been the minority. It was sort of a scary feeling when I got up to make my little presentation—to look out over all these black faces, I had never been there, in a situation like that before.” After a few years as a teacher at Stillman, Andrews was put in charge of the summer program, which in her mind was originally “very paternalistic.” Over time, things changed: “Gradually we integrated the staff. Where they formerly used to have me up in the cafeteria at different times, the staff would have a private dining room. We integrated that. We just went on and ate with all the delegates.”
²⁸

Andrews soon began wrestling with the incongruity between her integrated experiences at Stillman and her segregated hometown: “I would come back to Montgomery, to the situation here, and it was very difficult. You just had to change your personality altogether almost to get back into Montgomery. That’s where I just found out that all people are just
people. So we started then from that, having this little group meet for Bible Study.” The local group was all black except for Andrews until she met with Mrs. Dorothy Rogers Tilly of the Southern Regional Conference. Tilly connected Andrews with a national organization and helped her begin to network with other like-minded white women in Montgomery. The prayer group met monthly in black churches since most white congregations proved hesitant to permit an integrated meeting in their facilities. Andrews planned the agenda, arranged for speakers, and secured locations for this rare interracial gathering in the city. Virginia Durr recognized the contribution Andrews made to the community, claiming she “built the first bridge that was built in Montgomery. She put her whole soul and heart into it and she was the foundation. She really began the process of interchange between the two races on an equal basis.”
²⁹

When Virginia Durr moved to Montgomery, it was Clara Rutledge who invited her to a meeting of Andrews’s prayer group, which was also called the Fellowship of the Concerned. The wife of I. B. Rutledge, who served as the chief of the local Bureau of County Aid, Clara found creative ways to join the local struggle for racial justice. She mobilized a group of white southern churchwomen who attended court hearings in Montgomery when a possible miscarriage of justice against an African American was before the court. When E. D. Nixon suspected a black defendant was not guilty in an upcoming case, he would often call Clara Rutledge, who “would fill that left hand side when you go into the old police court with white women on the front seats, on the first two or three front seats. And it was mighty hard for a judge to go too far wrong with all those white women standing there listening.” Rutledge, Andrews, and Morgan joined with Nixon and other African Americans in the early 1950s as part of a vibrant group willing to challenge racial mores in Montgomery.
³⁰

Long before the NAACP or New Deal Democrats arrived on the scene, the black church was already an integral part of the lives of many of the city’s African Americans. The city’s first African American Baptist church emerged out of the white-controlled First Baptist Church in 1867 as a logical outgrowth of their desire for greater autonomy following the end of slavery. Originally called Columbus Street Baptist Church, it was later renamed the First Baptist Church by the congregation. Ten years after its founding, a small group left to form the Second Colored Baptist
Church. While the exact reasons for the church split are sketchy, later explanations emphasize the role of class, suggesting that those departing Columbus Street Baptist objected to the congregation’s emotive styles of worship and the muddy entrance to the building following heavy rains. The Second Colored Baptist Church soon purchased an old slave-trader’s pen a short block from the State Capitol on the corner of Dexter and Decatur avenues. With the construction of their building on the site, the church changed its name to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
³¹