He stood on the shoulders of giants
By Bernie Hayes For the St. Louis American
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a symbol of national and universal pride. Everyone knows the myths, the legends and even some of the facts.
While much has been written about Dr. King and the dramatic events which occurred in the Deep South, a most important and significant part of the story of the Civil Rights Movement has largely gone untold.
Most are aware that Dr. King was an advocate of free speech, who used the media as an open forum to broadcast his views on politics, society and morals. We understand that he had strong family support, strong community support and a clear sense of the sacrifices that others had made. But where did he get his strength? Who were his heroes and heroines?
The most noted of Dr. King’s models was Mahatma Gandhi. They met in 1959 when King visited India. King had long been interested in Mahatma Gandhi’s practice of nonviolence. Yet when King returned to the United States, the civil rights struggle had greatly intensified, and violent resistance by whites to the nonviolent efforts of black demonstrators filled the newspapers with accounts of bloody confrontations.
Increasing demands were being made upon King as an advocate of nonviolent change. Although Gandhi set out a number of rules for the practice of civil disobedience, Dr. King stuck to his faith and to the policy of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Dr. King believed with unshakeable conviction that the message he was delivering was universal, applying equally to every man, woman and child, blacks and whites alike. And he seized the opportunity of bringing that message personally to almost every state in America and every country on earth.
But who were his role models?
E.D. Nixon was paramount in casting Dr. King into the limelight and to the vanguard of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Affectionately dubbed as the father of the Civil Rights Movement, Nixon was the head of the Montgomery branch of the Pullman Porters union and president of the local NAACP.
It was E. D. Nixon who called Martin Luther King Jr. when Rosa Parks was arrested, but it was Nixon who bailed Rosa Parks out of jail. E.D. Nixon is the person who catapulted Dr. King into the national spotlight.
But this was not Nixon’s, nor King’s nor Parks’ true declarations of freedom, or their initial steps toward prominence. Before the Montgomery boycott, in the 1940’s, Nixon had been campaigning for civil rights and had, on several occasions, led marchers to the Montgomery County Courthouse to attempt to register black citizens to vote.
So Dr. King placed one foot on a shoulder of E.D. Nixon, but where did he place his other foot? It was on a shoulder of the Reverend Vernon Johns, another father of the Civil Rights Movement. There were many fathers and mothers of the movement.
The Rev. Vernon Johns was the man who instigated the great advances for civil rights in the United States by Adam Clayton Powell Jr.; the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas; and King’s attack on segregation in the South and North.
Johns was the pastor of The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church before Dr. King. In 1947 Johns found his way to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In spite of his eccentricities, its black-elite congregation liked his preaching and his leadership. Within two years, however, he started to speak out about racial issues and to castigate his congregation for ignoring them. He was critical of both the black and the white population of Montgomery.
Race was not a popular topic in the press in the late 194Os. It was assumed that black people would accept their position unquestioningly, but Johns started to make waves. He persuaded black women to bring charges in court against their white rapists and he helped the women with their cases. No one was convicted, but just getting the white men into court was an achievement.
Several years before 1955, when Rosa Parks made history by refusing to move to the back of the bus, Johns tried to sit in the white section. When the bus driver refused to let him, Johns demanded to have his fare back and got it. Johns was even bold enough to order food in an all-white restaurant.
Members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church congregation were increasingly discomfited by his behavior and by his criticism of them. He scolded them for being consumers unwilling to do manual work. He accused them of doing nothing while their race was being killed. Johns eventually offered his resignation, and the deacons accepted it after much debate. In 1952 Johns was once again a traveling preacher, and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church searched for a more conservative preacher. They found Martin Luther King Jr.
There was a time when Vernon Johns was better known than Martin Luther King Jr. When King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he identified himself as Vernon Johns’ successor. Subsequent events made it inevitable that Johns would ever thereafter be known as Martin Luther King’s predecessor.
Dr. King was not John’s only legacy. Have you investigated why Brown V. Board of Education was heard by the Supreme Court? Five cases from Delaware, Kansas, Washington, D.C., South Carolina and Virginia were appealed to the United States Supreme Court when none of the cases was successful in the lower courts. The Supreme Court combined these cases into a single case, which eventually became Brown v. Board of Education.
One hundred and seventeen African-American high school students chose to strike rather than attend the all-black Robert Moton School, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The students initially wanted a new building with indoor plumbing to replace the old school. The strike leader was Barbara Johns, daughter of Vernon Johns.
She is the one who enlisted the assistance of NAACP attorneys. As a result, a suit was filed in 1951 on behalf of the students. The U.S. District Court ordered equal facilities be provided for the black students but “denied the plaintiffs admission to the white schools during the equalization program.” Attorneys for the NAACP filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, this became a vital part of the Court’s integration decision.
Vernon Johns died in 1965 of a heart attack. He was a man ahead of his time in the movement, but Dr. King carried on graciously.