New Sounds In a Courthouse

For 100 years Negroes walked soft and spoke low around Alabama's Montgomery County courthouse. Then, for four days last week, the tramp of Negro feet sounded heavy in the dingy downstairs corridors, on the creaking steps and in the second-floor hallway (with its sign reading, "Gentlemen will not and others must not spit on the floor"). In the drab courtroom, decorated by an American flag and five advertising calendars, Negro voices were raised in pain and anger. And outside the old courthouse, shabby for all its pretensions of Greek revival elegance, a Negro crowd roared hope.

On trial in Montgomery was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 27, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and leader of the Negro boycott against the Montgomery bus company (TIME, Jan. 16 et seq.}. King was the first of 90 defendants (including 24 ministers) to be tried under an Alabama law (enacted in 1921 as an antilabor measure) making it a misdemeanor to conspire "without a just cause or legal excuse" to hinder any company in its conduct of business.

The prosecution concentrated on proving that the Montgomery Improvement Association, with Pastor King as president, was organized last Dec. 5, the day the bus boycott began, for the specific purpose of supporting the boycott and forcing Negro demands on the bus company. The defense aim was to prove, within the meaning of the statute, that the Negro protest against Jim Crow practices on the buses was just.

"Come Out, Nigger." As the trial began, Montgomery's firm, plain-spoken Circuit Judge Eugene Carter looked out at Martin Luther King, surrounded by eight lawyers and backed by some 150 Negro spectators, many of them wearing cloth crosses with the words, "Father, forgive them." Prosecutor William Thetford produced evidence that the Montgomery Improvement Association had disbursed about $30,000 for boycott purposes; e.g., drivers in the boycott's 200-car motor pool were paid up to $24 a week.

Montgomery City Lines' Manager J. H. Bagley said the boycott had been about 95% effective among Negroes, testified that Pastor King had acted as the Negro spokesman in negotiations with the bus company. Other witnesses told of strong-arm efforts to enforce the boycott: seven company drivers said their buses had been stoned or shot at; Courthouse Janitor Ernest Smith said another Negro had threatened to "whip me" for riding a bus. Smith, a 200-pounder, said he knocked the man down and kept on bus riding. Defendant King was not linked to any of the violence; rather, the evidence showed he had urged against it.

Defense witnesses--Negro housewives, maids, laborers, students--attempted to prove the boycott's "just cause" by telling of abuse they had suffered. After a lifetime of taking it quietly, their emotions welled up and overflowed in their testimony. Some began talking before defense lawyers asked for their names; others could hardly be stopped. Martha Kate Walker told how her blind husband's leg was hurt when a bus driver shut a door on him and drove on. Stella Brooks said her husband had been shot to death for disobeying a bus driver (her testimony was stricken from the record because she had not witnessed the shooting). Sadie Brooks told of seeing a Negro man forced from a bus at pistol-point because he did not have the correct change. Delia Perkins testified that a driver had called her an "ugly black ape." Richard Jordan said his pregnant wife had been forced to give her seat to a white woman. Georgia Teresa Gilmore said when she boarded a bus, the driver shouted, "Come out, nigger, and go in the back door," and when she stepped off, drove away.

Heart & Pocketbook. As a witness, Defendant King argued that the boycott began spontaneously, that he had not instigated it but had become its spokesman after it had already developed. It did not take Judge Carter long to hand down his verdict (King had waived a jury trial): King was found guilty, fined $500, assessed $500 in court costs, and released on bond pending appeal. The crowd flowed out in front of the courthouse, surrounding King and his wife. A gold-toothed woman shouted: "We ain't going to ride the buses now for sure." A middle-aged woman told King: "My heart and my pocketbook are at your disposal." A mass prayer meeting was set for that night. A man yelled to the crowd: "You going to be there?" Chorused the crowd: "Yes!" The same man shouted: "You going to ride the buses?" Roared the crowd: "No!" The old courthouse, which had never heard such sounds from Negroes, would never be the same again.

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