Speaking Words of Wisdom

Passionate oratory voiced by church ministers and lay leaders catalyzed the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. Instead of counting on physical comforts or material wealth to support its awe-inspiring endurance and drive to tear down racial barriers, the black community fed itself with the "soul food" of its leaders' daily rhetoric at mass Church meetings.

These are three of my favorite quotes from the Montgomery bus boycott, which was initiated when Rosa Parks boarded a bus, only a block from my current office, and refused to take a back seat as segregations laws required.*

And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair.
There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.
Martin Luther King, December 5th 1955 at a mass meeting signalling the start of the boycott.


We are not wrong in what we are doing.
If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this mighty nation is wrong.
If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.
If we are wrong, God almighty is wrong.
Martin Luther King, December 5th 1955.

When MLK's own speech failed to resonate with the crowd at a later mass meeting in support of the boycott, Mother Pollard, one of the older members of the congregation walked up to the pulpit, comforted MLK and threw the crowd into a frenzy when she declared:
My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.
This simple sentence became one of the mantras of the Montgomery bus boycott.

*The boycott lasted for a full year, from December 5, 1955 until December 21, 1956. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the age of only 26 (!!), the Montgomery Improvement Association worked on a shoestring and succeeded in keeping the boycott together. In addition to fleets of carpools and drivers organized by the MIA to help overcome the black community's near total dependence on public transportation, many people wound up trekking long distances by foot just to avoid taking the buses. The yearlong boycott represented an incredible feat of organization, unity and sheer willpower and propelled the southern Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. to the national consciousness. Though an area on the corner of the street where Rosa Parks boarded the bus is today called the Rosa Parks Plaza, no memorial or plaque exists at that location describing her momentous act.