Whatever it took, they would do it. That first night, more than 150 car owners signed up to lend their cars to the boycott. The fractious classes of Montgomery’s Negroes now promised to blend their daily lives. Several thousand of them floated from the mass meeting of December 8 on a buoyant new cloud of optimism, leaving the harsh arithmetic to the future, or to God. Between 30,000 and 40,000 Negro fares were being denied to the buses every day. Subtracting generously for walkers and for people who were simply staying at home, the car pool would have to supply 20,000 rides, which worked out
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