“They Are Willing to Walk” 105    ment,” though they added that it was “not a request for the abolition of segregation on buses but for a fair and reasonable seating of passengers so as to assure all passengers equal treatment.” The mayor and city com- missioners refused to budge, citing their commitment to uphold city and 40 state law. Despite the internal controversy, the Alabama Tribune editorial di- rector, Emory Jackson, remained impressed by the boycott as it entered its sixth week. He stressed not only the unity of the people and the qual- ity of leadership, but also the economic benefit the protest yielded for the community’s African American citizens, noting Montgomery “has demonstrated the power of mobilized purchasing power” and that “the dollar can be made to perform a double duty in a democracy.” Instead of patronizing city buses, blacks hired carpool drivers and purchased gas from black-owned service stations. The boycott of buses also meant most African Americans had less time, opportunity, and inclination to patron- 41 ize downtown Montgomery’s predominantly white-owned businesses. The bus boycott galvanized the African American community around a common protest, but that was not all that bound the people together. As Jackson’s editorial suggests, one consequence of the boycott was the establishing of a parallel black economy in the city. Instead of spending their dollars in white-owned businesses downtown, African Americans increasingly depended upon one another, creating new business and job opportunities. While the working class bore the brunt of the protest by not riding city buses, some did benefit from the broader galvanizing of the black community surrounding the boycott. Not only were some new jobs created, such as driving vehicles for the car pools, but numerous rela- tionships were forged across class lines. The economic dimensions of the boycott must have particularly pleased Nixon, who not only longed for symbolic victories to challenge segregation, but who also desired substan- tive changes in the daily lives for all of Montgomery’s black citizens. As he tried to respond to the controversy caused by the Fields editori- al, King delivered a sermon titled “How to Believe in a Good God in the Midst of Glaring Evil.” Among King’s responses to the problem of evil was his assertion that “disbelief in a good God presents more problems than it solves. It is difficult to explain the presence of evil in the world of a good God, but it is more difficult to explain the presence of good in