130 BECOMING KING cott cases until the appeal had been heard. Over a year later, the court of appeals denied King’s appeal, as his attorneys had waited too long to 31 officially file the complaint. Immediately after the verdict, Coretta King joined her husband in a press conference outside the courthouse. Coretta affirmed that she had not wavered from her commitment to her husband and the protest: “All along I have supported my husband in this cause, and whatever happens to him, happens to me.” Again King took the opportunity to advocate nonviolence: “there is no bitterness on my part as a result of the decision and I’m sure that I voice the sentiment of the more than forty thousand Negro citizens of Montgomery. We still have the attitude of love, we still have the method of passive resistance and we are still insisting, em- phatically, that violence is self-defeating.” That evening the community gathered for a mass meeting during which King further reflected on his trial. He began his remarks by confessing to committing three sins: “be- ing born a Negro,” “being subjected to the battering rams of segregation and oppression,” and “having the moral courage to stand up and express our weariness of this oppression.” Remarking on the decision of Judge Carter, King noted that perhaps “he did the best he could under the ex- pedient method. As you know, men in political positions allow themselves to succumb to the expedient rather than reaching out for the moral that might be eternally corrective and true.” He also sounded a message of hope in America, which has the capacity “to transform democracy from thin paper to thick action.” King applied biblical imagery to the suffer- ing of the people of Montgomery: “You don’t get to the promised land without going through the wilderness. Though we may not get to see the promised land, we know it’s coming because God is for it. So don’t worry about some of the things we have to go through. They are just a neces- 32 sary part of the great movement that we are making toward freedom.” The following day, Montgomery Advertiser editor Joe Azbell inter- viewed King. Azbell asked him if he was afraid, to which King replied: “No I’m not. My attitude is that this is a great cause, it is a great issue that we are confronted with and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important.” Convinced that this was his hour to “stand up and be counted,” he reflected on the perils of fear: “My great prayer is always for God to save me from the paralysis of crippling fear,