26 BECOMING KING Years later, many remembered the significant role Johns’s activism played in preparing the community for the coming civil rights movement. Although the recollections of Dexter members give Johns too much credit for the community’s later activism, they accurately emphasize his boldness. According to J. E. Pierce, a professor of political science at ASC and member of Dexter, Johns was “a very militant person, and he did not stand back.” Prior to Johns’s ministry, Pierce contended that the African American community was paralyzed by fear. While not all African Ameri- cans in Montgomery were afraid, those with the courage of Johns were few and far between. Pierce believed Johns planted seeds of resistance that bore fruit years later through the courageous days of the bus boy- cott. Dexter member Rufus Lewis concurred, noting that Johns “was a militant man in that anything that happened in the community, he would talk about it in the church in regards to denying Negroes their rights. He would preach about it.” Eugene Ligon, who was the owner and operator of a Montgomery diner called the Regal Café, claimed that Johns “was the focal point of things that concerned the black community. He had the power of speaking and persuasion to get people to listen to him; and they did.” A published history of Dexter described Johns’s tenure in glowing terms: “His dramatic teachings aroused not only the Dexter family, but thousands of citizens of Montgomery to the social transition which was taking place in the Southern way of life. Of him it was said ‘he kindled the flame of thought in the citizens of Montgomery.’ His sermons were relevant to social and contemporary problems but were highlighted by a spiritual base.” Although in retrospect the people of Dexter admired Johns, his willingness to rock the boat both within the church and in the broader community frightened many. A growing number of Dexter members began to view Johns as a threat to their dignity and even their 37 livelihood. Dexter’s reputation was well established throughout the communi- ty. Fred Gray, who attended ASC from 1947 to 1951 and returned to Montgomery in 1954 as the city’s second black attorney, developed some strong impressions of the congregation. He believed Dexter “was not known as a church that would get involved in real community projects. It was more or less a church of the black middle class and had not been very active in any community activities that I can recall, and certainly