“The Stirring of the Water” 27    nothing that could be interpreted as being controversial because you had a lot of persons there who were in the education field.” Gray’s reflections correctly identified at least one of the factors influencing many in the con- gregation to evade controversy: their employment as educators. Not only were the city’s primary and secondary public schools under the authority of white officials, but Alabama State was largely funded through the State of Alabama, making its teachers vulnerable to white reprisals. Simply put, if they wanted to remain secure in their positions, teachers and professors 38 knew to steer clear of controversial actions in the community. Though some feared possible repercussions under Johns’s leadership, he inspired others with his boldness. Among those influenced by Johns’s challenges was Dexter member Mary Fair Burks. In the early 1950s, Burks founded the most significant African American group working for social change in Montgomery during that time: the Women’s Political Council (WPC). Burks later claimed the WPC was “the outgrowth of scars I suffered as a result of racism as well as my desire to arouse black middle-class women to do something about the things they could change in segregated Montgomery.” One day while driving through Montgom- ery, Burks narrowly missed a white woman who darted into a crosswalk after the light had turned green. A police officer witnessed the close call and promptly arrested Burks. Following a brief time in jail, she “resolved to do something more about segregation besides waging my own per- sonal war. My arrest convinced me that defiance alone would do little or nothing to remedy such situations. Only organized effort could do that.” The following Sunday, Johns’s sermon included one of his usual attacks on the complacency of the congregation’s members. Burks heeded the reproach by directly challenging black women in Montgomery to get involved, noting that their “outward indifference was a mask to protect 39 their psyche and their sanity.” Burks immediately got to work developing the new organization. She personally contacted fifty women for an initial meeting, with the hope that a new group could address some of Montgomery’s most pressing racial problems. The WPC was not Montgomery’s first significant gather- ing of African American women seeking change in the city. In addition to very active women’s ministries at Dexter, the city had various black wom- en’s clubs, including the Ten Times One Is Ten Club, an organization