The Boycott That Changed Dr. King's Life

By the time the Montgomery Improvement Association chose the 26-year-old Luther King Jr. as its leader, the hours-old bus boycott by the black citizens of Montgomery, Ala., was already an overwhelming success. King would later write that his unanticipated call to leadership "happened so quickly that I did not have time to think it through. It is probable that if I had, I would have declined the nominations.

Although press reports at the time focused on his inspiring oratory, King was actually a reluctant leader of a movement initiated by others. (The boycott began on Dec. 5, 1955.) His subsequent writings and private correspondence reveal a man whose inner doubts sharply contrast with his public persona. In the early days of his involvement, King was troubled by telephone threats, discord within the black community and Montgomery's "get tough" policy, to which King attributed his jailing on a minor traffic violation. One night, as he considered ways to "move out of the picture without appearing a coward," he began to pray aloud and, at that moment, "experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before."

He would later admit that when the boycott began, he was not yet firmly committed to Gandhian principles. Although he had been exposed to those teachings in college, he had remained skeptical. "I thought the only way we could solve our problem of segregation was an armed revolt," he recalled. "I felt that the Christian ethic of love was confined to individual relationships."

Only after his home was bombed in late January did King reconsider his views on violence. (At the time, he was seeking a gun permit and was protected by armed bodyguards.) Competing with each other to influence King were two ardent pacifists: Bayard Rustin, a black activist with the War Resisters League, and the Rev. Glenn E. Smiley, a white staff member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Rustin was shocked to discover a gun in King's house while Smiley informed fellow pacifists that King's home was "an arsenal."

By the time the Supreme Court struck down Montgomery's bus segregation policies, in November 1956, King had been permanently changed. "Living through the actual experience of the protest, nonviolence became more than a method to which I gave intellectual assent," he would later explain. "It became a commitment to a way of life."

After the boycott, King allowed himself to reflect on his growing fame and his own self-doubts. "Frankly, I'm worried to death," he said. "A man who hits the peak at 27 has a tough job ahead. People will be expecting me to pull rabbits out of the hat for the rest of my life."

Clayborne Carson

New York Times Magazine, 7 January 1996