190 Notes to Pages 15–19 13. Roberson, Fighting the Good Fight, 21, 56; Virginia Durr to Clark and Mairi Foreman, February 26, 1953, in Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer, 47. Montgomery’s NAACP chapter was not alone in its middle-class orientation. According to Manford Berg in his recent study of the NAACP, the years im- mediately following World War II saw a vast increase in working-class mem- berships, a period that corresponds with when E. D. Nixon was president of his local and state chapters. Despite this surge, Berg admits that “the local leaders continued to be male and middle-class.” The spike in membership nationally was short-lived, with a 1946 high-water mark of roughly 540,000 members decreasing to 350,000 in 1948, and falling to 150,000 in 1950 (Berg, “The Ticket to Freedom,” 109–11). 14. E. D. Nixon to Walter White, December 14, 1944, Group II, Box C-4, Montgomery Branch, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Papers, 1940–1954, Library of Congress, Wash- ington, D.C. Hereafter cited as Montgomery NAACP Papers. 15. Rosa Parks to Ella Baker, May 2, 1945, Donald Jones to Ella Baker, 1945, Montgomery NAACP Papers. 16. E. D. Nixon to W. G. Porter, 1945, W. G. Porter to Ella Baker, December 1945, Montgomery NAACP Papers; Parks, with Haskins, Rosa Parks, My Story, 80–95. 17. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 48, 71. 18. The Citizens Overall Committee letterhead used in 1944 lists most major African American organizations in Montgomery as members. The presidents and leaders of the NAACP, the Negro Civic League, and the City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs were joined by President Trenholm of Alabama State Teachers College, several prominent businessmen, teachers, and ministers, as well as local newspaper editors in serving as members of the Citizens Overall Committee. The particular correspondence concerned the need to upgrade “the condition of the Ladies rest room in the Colored Wait- ing Room in the Union Station.” Nixon also drew attention to the filth of the wash basin and the unsanitary state of the drinking water provided (E. D. Nixon to the President of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, February 7, 1944, Box 27, Nixon Collection; Nixon, interview by Lumpkin). 19. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, 27; Alabama Tribune, December 5, 1952. 20. Nixon, interview by Lumpkin; Warlick, “‘Man of the Year’ for ’54,” 27; Donald Jones to Ella Baker, 1945, Ella Baker to E. D. Nixon, January 21, 1946, Montgomery NAACP Papers; Gray, Leventhal, Sikora, and Thornton, The Children Coming On, 225. 21. Charles G. Gomillion was the dean of students and a sociology pro-