Alabama v. King by Dan Abrams

Author:Dan Abrams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2022-03-09T18:21:57+00:00

Chapter Ten

“Negro Montgomery,” reported the Alabama Tribune, “at last got a chance to ‘testify’ to the wrongs it has suffered—from way, way back.” This was to be that first, long-awaited day. And while this was taking place in a compact, aging courtroom in the heart of Dixie, the stories that were heard there might just as easily been told about many cities, both South and North, throughout the country. The defense case would be both a legal and moral one. As a legal matter, the defense would seek to prove that the mistreatment on the buses served as a valid “legal excuse” for a protest. But knowing their legal chances were slim, at the least they intended to publicly expose those indignities once and for all.

The defense had interviewed many dozens of people before settling on its witnesses. They wanted to present a cross section of the community, including men and women, educated and uneducated, young and old, rich and poor, to demonstrate that the only thing that all of these people had in common was the color of their skin. “I interviewed every one of them,” Gray remembers. “Usually Shores or Orzell or other members of the team would come down to Montgomery and we would meet with people who had volunteered to testify in my office. We looked for people who had experienced the kind of problems that fit into our strategy and could describe those incidents in detail. There was no shortage of that. These people wanted to help and they did help.

“For some of them, it was not an easy decision. In some instances they had never before stood up to a white person. By testifying, they were bringing attention to themselves, those people who had jobs in the white community were risking them—and some people did lose those jobs because they testified.”

Lawyer Langford began the defense case by calling Thelma Williams Glass to the stand. The dignified Professor Glass taught history, geography, English “and common sense,” according to her former student at Alabama State University, Fred Gray. She also was a founding member of the Women’s Political Council. “Mrs. Glass was my first college teacher,” Gray remembers. “Alabama State was on a quarterly basis and I kind of rushed through my high school exams and enrolled there in December of 1947. Mrs. Glass ended up teaching me in English, history and geography, and then became our senior class adviser. Normally I would have examined her, which would have been fitting, but Charles Langford’s two sisters were working with Mrs. Glass in the Political Council and they wanted to be sure that Charles played a role in the case, so we decided that he would examine her.”

A prim, articulate, “smartly attired” (according to the Tribune) woman, Thelma Glass was called first to set the tone for the defense. “And she did,” Gray recalls. “I insisted she be our lead witness because she had the ability to set the stage for what we wanted to show,” Gray said.

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