The Fifties

by David Halberstam

Ed Nixon got up and began to taunt them. “How in hell are you going to have protest meetings without letting the white folks know?” he began. Then he reminded them that those being hurt were the black women of the city, the most powerless of the powerless, the domestics who went off every day to work for whites. These were the people who suffered the greatest pain from segregation and made up the core of every black church in town. “Let me tell you gentlemen one thing. You ministers have lived off the sweat of these washwomen all these years and you have never done anything for them,” he said. His contempt seemed to fill the church. “I am just ashamed of you. You said that God has called you to lead the people and now you are just afraid and gone to pieces because the man tells you that the newspapers will be here and your picture might come out in the newspaper. Somebody has got to get hurt in this thing and if you the preachers are not the leaders then we will have to pray that God will send us more leaders.” That stunning assault contained all too much truth. It was a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., who answered Nixon and said that he was not a coward, that they should act in the open, use their own names, and not hide behind anyone else. With that, the Rev. King had at once taken a strong position for the boycott, but he had also shown he was not completely Nixon’s man. Before the meeting was over, Martin Luther King, Jr., was named president of the new g...