“Living under the Tension” 121    The MIA struggled to find appropriate responses in part because white attacks came from so many different directions. Many working-class whites expressed their solidarity with the city commissioners by joining the local White Citizens Council, which became the community’s largest white organization by the end of January. On February 10, more than ten thousand turned out for a WCC gathering to hear Mississippi senator James Eastland. During the rally, the crowd applauded the resolve of city leaders in the face of the bus boycott. Using the methods of intimida- tion and economic reprisals against those participating in the boycott, the ranks of the WCC were bolstered by union members, who had a history of local resistance to interracial policies advocated by the national AFL- CIO. In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions, many local unions even threatened to break away from their national organizations. Four of the seven members of the Montgomery WCC executive board were union members, leading attorney Clifford Durr to label most of the members of the citizens’ council “riff-raff” rather than people of any real prominence. Despite Durr’s dismissive appraisal, the numbers of laborers who joined the council made it an organization of significant white resis- tance during the boycott. Union members continued to bolster the ranks as each round of bus-driver layoffs sparked greater anger and bitterness. During the boycott, Montgomery’s Carpenters Hall, where many unions met for their meetings, even became a locus of Ku Klux Klan activity.13 White resistance to racial equality included the clergy. During the week after the bombing of King’s home, a Fisk university researcher in- terviewed G. Stanley Frazier, who served as the pastor of St. James Meth- odist Church in Montgomery. A member of the WCC, Frazier attacked the MIA for attempting to use “the church as an instrument to destroy segregation.” Frazier claimed that “both races prefer segregation” and that the boycott was ultimately an attempt to force integration on the 14 people of Montgomery. Political leaders also dug in their heels as the boycott wore on. Mont- gomery mayor, William “Tacky” Gayle, when asked what was the root cause of the bus boycott, responded: “Segregation. They want to destroy our whole social fabric. We have laws that they want to ignore.” Gayle complained that white women who were driving their maids to work and back were partly responsible for the success of the boycott. Virginia Durr