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Parks, minutes, mass meeting at First CME Church, June 19, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers (NN-Sc); King, “The Peril of Superficial Optimism in the Area of Race Relations,” June 19, 1955, in
Papers of MartinLuther King,
Jr., 6: 214–15; King Jr., “Discerning the Signs of History,” June 26, 1955, ibid., 6: 216–19.
    43. King Jr., “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” July 24, 1955, Folder 101, Sermon File.
    44. Graetz,
A White Preacher’s Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott
(Montgomery: Black Belt Press, 1998), 35–37.
    45. Ibid., 50.
    46. Juliette Morgan to William A. Gayle, July 13, 1955, Box 4, Morgan Papers.
    47. Rosa Parks, minutes, Montgomery branch executive committee meeting, July 13, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers (NN-Sc). Founded in 1932, the Highlander Folk School served as a critical southern training center for labor and civil rights activists.
    48. Rosa Parks to Mrs. Henry F. Shepherd, July 6, 1955, Mss 265, Folder 22, Box 22, Highlander Research and Education Center; Parks, with Haskins,
Rosa Parks: My Story,
102–7.
    49. Rosa Parks, minutes, Montgomery branch executive committee meeting, August 14, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers (NN-Sc).
    50. Virginia Durr to Jessica Mitford, May 6, 1955, in Sullivan, ed.,
Freedom Writer,
87–88; Yeakey, “The Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955–56,” 9–13, 16–18.
    51. Yeakey, “The Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955–1956,” 22–23. Lamont Yeakey, in his dissertation on the bus boycott, claims that Montgomery’s black clubs and social organizations “crisscrossed class, geographic, and occupational lines.” His only support for this assertion is based on an anecdote of a time when a club reached out to help a poor family who had lost their home to a fire when they heard about the family’s plight. While such charitable contributions did provide some connection between the classes, they were predicated on a paternalistic model of racial uplift. For the most part, the clubs and social circles reinforced rather than broke down class distinctions (ibid., 50–53).
    52. King Jr., “Worship,” August 7, 1955, in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 222–25. In
Stride toward Freedom,
King used similar language to describe his earliest impressions of Dexter: “I was anxious to change the impression in the community that Dexter was a sort of silk-stocking church catering only to a certain class. Often it was referred to as the ‘big folks church.’ Revolting against this idea, I was convinced that worship at its best is a social experience with people of all levels of life coming together to realize their oneness and unity under God. Whenever the church, consciously or unconsciously, caters to one class it loses the spiritual force of the ‘whosoeverwill, let them come’ doctrine, and is in danger of becoming little more than a social club with a thin veneer of religiosity” (25).
    53. King Jr., “Looking Beyond Your Circumstances,” September 18, 1955, in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 225–30.
    54. For more on the death of Emmett Till and its significance, see Whit-field,
A Death in the Delta.
King, “Pride versus Humility,” September 25, 1955, in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 230–34.
    55. King Jr., “The Impassable Gulf (The Parable of Dives and Lazarus),” October 2, 1955, in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 235–39. In developing this sermon, King relied on George Buttrick’s insights on the parable (see Buttrick,
The Parables of Jesus,
87–91).
    56. J. Mills Thornton III, “Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956,” in Garrow, ed.,
The Walking City,
338–39.
    57. “Annual of the Alabama Baptist State Convention, 1955,” “Special Session,” September 15, 1955; “Regular Session,” November 15, 16, 17, 1955, Birmingham, Ala., p. 125, LPR 135, Folder 7, Box 7, Alabama State Archives.
    58. Alabama Council on Human Relations newsletter, no. 4 (October 1955), Folder 5, Box