As ambassador to India, and an influential Democratic Party leader, Chester Bowles was a powerful voice of support for King’s methods and message of nonviolence. In a letter to Bowles’s wife Dorothy expressing appreciation for the Bowles financial support during the Montgomery bus boycott, King described him as “one of the greatest statesmen of our nation and of our age” (Papers 3:466).
Chester Bliss Bowles was born on 5 April 1901 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Charles Allen and Nellie Harris Bowles. He received his B.S. from Yale University in 1924 and started an advertising firm in 1929. After becoming active in politics, he won election as governor of Connecticut, serving from 1949-1951. Upon leaving office, he was appointed Ambassador to India. While in India, he became very popular with the Indian government, as well as the people of India for his unpretentious and personable style. Bowles’s time in India deepened his appreciation for Gandhian principles of nonviolence and encouraged his belief in the potential of mass movements to affect social change. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1953, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Connecticut, serving one term before joining the Kennedy administration as Under Secretary of State. In 1963 President Kennedy reappointed him as ambassador to India, a position he held until 1969.
Bowles wrote King in 1957, urging him to go to India and offering to put him in contact with people who had worked with Gandhi, including Prime Minister Nehru. Bowles compared King’s role in the Montgomery bus boycott to the nonviolent campaigns led by Gandhi, stating, “In America you are developing techniques which will not only establish American Negroes as first class citizens, but will do this in a way that earns the respect of all Americans, North and South, white and Negro. The Gandhian method achieves this object not by hurting anyone but by making everyone better” (Bowles to King, 28 January 1957).
Bowles telephoned Coretta Scott King on behalf of the Kennedy campaign during the 1960 presidential race, offering support after King was sentenced to four months in prison following a traffic violation. Bowles, along with King, Harris Wofford, and Bayard Rustin, used his position as chairman of the 1960 Democratic platform committee to draft the strongest civil rights planks ever adopted by the party.