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4, Baskin Papers.
    59. King Jr., “The One-Sided Approach of the Good Samaritan,” November 20, 1955, in
Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
6: 239–40.
    60. Largely unaware of the content of many of King’s early Dexter sermons, Richard Lischer erroneously concluded: “During the summer and fall of 1955 Pastor King reverted to a more philosophical style of preaching. He delivered well-rounded statements on the meaning of life, such as ‘Discerning the Signs of History,’ ‘The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,’ and ‘The One-Sided Approach of the Good Samaritan.’ During the first year he rarely attacked the problem of racism in Montgomery, though he did encourage and finally require NAACP membership and voter registration. When the bus crisis broke in December of that year, he suddenly found a focus and a climax for his sermons. The abstractions give way to the demands of the struggle. The sign of history par excellence is liberation. The evil that must die upon the seashore is segregation. The Good Samaritan now teaches not merely love but a dangerous love between the races. Everything has changed.” He also mistakenly concludes that “In King’s early speeches, the viciousness of racism is minimized” (Lischer,
The Preacher King,
83–84, 87). King later described his first eighteen months in Montgomery as a time when “there was a ground swell of discontent. Such men as Vernon Johns and E. D. Nixon had never tired of keeping the problem before the conscience of the community. When others had feared to speak, they had spoken with courage. When othershad dared not take a stand, they had stood with valor and determination.” He later added: “through the work of men like Johns and Nixon there had developed beneath the surface a slow fire of discontent, fed by the continuing indignities and inequities to which the Negroes were subjected. These were fearless men who created the atmosphere for the social revolution that was slowly developing in the Cradle of the Confederacy. But this discontent was still latent in 1954” (King Jr.,
Stride toward Freedom,
38–39).
4. “They Are Willing to Walk”
    1. Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton,
The Children Coming On,
13.
    2. Jo Ann Robinson, leaflet,
Another Negro woman has been arrested,
December 2, 1955, Montgomery County District Attorney’s Files.
    3. Gray,
Bus Ride to Justice,
52. Steven M. Millner also stresses this point: “Nixon, and his political allies, Robinson and Burks, continued to move rapidly because they sensed they had to outflank the generally conservative local black clergy” (Millner, “The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A Case Study in the Emergence of a Social Movement,” in Garrow, ed.,
The Walking City,
452). Garrow, ed.,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It,
53. Regarding Robinson’s critical role in the genesis of the boycott, her fellow WPC member Mary Fair Burks reflected: “nobody worked more diligently than she did as a member of the board of the Montgomery Improvement Association and as a representative of the Women’s Political Council. Although others had contemplated a boycott, it was due in large part to Jo Ann’s unswerving belief that it
could
be accomplished, and her never-failing optimism that it
would
be accomplished, and her selflessness and unbounded energy that it
was
accomplished” (Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds.,
Women in the Civil Rights Movement,
75). Rosa Parks, J. E. Pierce, Robert Graetz, “Montgomery Story,” August 21, 1956, Highlander Folk School Papers.
    4.
Southern Exposure
9, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 14. According to David Garrow, Abernathy called King before Nixon’s second call, and persuaded King to support the boycott (Garrow,
Bearing the Cross,
18). Ibid., 53.
    5. Garrow, ed.,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It,
48–50. B. J. Simms, in an interview with Steven M. Millner, discussed the Alabama State College president’s response to the boycott: “Trenholm