134 BECOMING KING among the classes. Robinson even believed “the line between the higher class and the proletariat has broken down—‘We are in this thing together’ 39 is the spirit on both levels.” The regular mass meetings also provided an opportunity for the com- munity to come together, leading many to view these gatherings as the heartbeat of the movement. The services also allowed boycott leaders, including many of the city’s preachers, to play a more public role in the movement. They became a place where the professional classes could join maids and day laborers in a common cause. One veteran pastor who had already earned the respect of many in the city prior to the boycott was Reverend Solomon Seay. King later called him “one of the few clerical voices that, in the years preceding the protest, had lashed out against the injustices heaped on the Negro, and urged his people to a greater appre- ciation of their own worth.” King noted his speeches “raised the spirits of all who heard him.” Seay himself viewed the movement as primarily spiritual, with Christianity providing “a common ground upon which ev- eryone could stand.” In Seay’s mind, the unifying effect of the boycott was best understood “as the work and purpose of God being fulfilled at 40 the historical moment in American history.” Mass meetings would become one of the defining forms of the civil rights movement. Boycott participant Alfreida Dean Thomas credited the gatherings for helping her feel “for the first time that here were people who had been separated just on really fictitious reasons but were now together in oneness of purpose. This alone was enough to make a good feeling.” King claimed the attendance at mass meetings included both professionals and the working class: “The vast majority present were working people; yet there was always an appreciable number of profes- sionals in the audience.” He went on to claim that “the so-called ‘big Negroes’ who owned cars and had never ridden the buses came to know the maids and laborers who rode the buses every day. Men and women who had been separated from each other by false standards of class were now singing and praying together in a common struggle for freedom and 41 human dignity.” For many observers of the Montgomery movement, one of the most significant developments among the city’s African American community was their willingness to take action. While hosting a workshop at High-