“The Stirring of the Water” 23    people. So we started then from that, having this little group meet for Bible Study.” The local group was all black except for Andrews until she met with Mrs. Dorothy Rogers Tilly of the Southern Regional Confer- ence. Tilly connected Andrews with a national organization and helped her begin to network with other like-minded white women in Montgom- ery. The prayer group met monthly in black churches since most white congregations proved hesitant to permit an integrated meeting in their facilities. Andrews planned the agenda, arranged for speakers, and se- cured locations for this rare interracial gathering in the city. Virginia Durr recognized the contribution Andrews made to the community, claiming she “built the first bridge that was built in Montgomery. She put her whole soul and heart into it and she was the foundation. She really began 29 the process of interchange between the two races on an equal basis.” When Virginia Durr moved to Montgomery, it was Clara Rutledge who invited her to a meeting of Andrews’s prayer group, which was also called the Fellowship of the Concerned. The wife of I. B. Rutledge, who served as the chief of the local Bureau of County Aid, Clara found creative ways to join the local struggle for racial justice. She mobilized a group of white southern churchwomen who attended court hearings in Mont- gomery when a possible miscarriage of justice against an African Ameri- can was before the court. When E. D. Nixon suspected a black defendant was not guilty in an upcoming case, he would often call Clara Rutledge, who “would fill that left hand side when you go into the old police court with white women on the front seats, on the first two or three front seats. And it was mighty hard for a judge to go too far wrong with all those white women standing there listening.” Rutledge, Andrews, and Morgan joined with Nixon and other African Americans in the early 1950s as part 30 of a vibrant group willing to challenge racial mores in Montgomery. Long before the NAACP or New Deal Democrats arrived on the scene, the black church was already an integral part of the lives of many of the city’s African Americans. The city’s first African American Baptist church emerged out of the white-controlled First Baptist Church in 1867 as a logical outgrowth of their desire for greater autonomy following the end of slavery. Originally called Columbus Street Baptist Church, it was later renamed the First Baptist Church by the congregation. Ten years after its founding, a small group left to form the Second Colored Baptist