182 BECOMING KING the end of the bus boycott over three years earlier, students from Alabama State took the lead in a sustained protest that lasted several weeks. The leadership for this new protest came not from the MIA or other estab- lished local civil rights organizations, but from young college students, who were part of a much larger movement that would soon organize as 2 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Young college students were willing to risk a great deal in an ef- fort to break down segregation in their city. The timing of their sit-ins was undoubtedly influenced by events in Greensboro and Nashville and throughout the South. The fact that these Alabama State students sat down at segregated lunch counters, risking arrest and abuse, was also a part of the legacy of their community. Many of their professors had been at the forefront of the boycott just a few years earlier. Several of these students had been on campus or in the broader community during the epic year of the bus protest. They were ready for this moment, in part because of the brave men and women who had stepped forward four years earlier. Despite white backlash and the floundering of local civil rights organizations over the previous three years, there were still young men and women ready to act in Montgomery to bring about substantive change and greater justice. The State of Alabama seized on the sit-ins and protests by students to finally go after some of the more active faculty members at Alabama State whom they suspected had been a part of the boycott years earlier. Even before the sit-ins had begun, the state had sent representatives from the state’s department of education into the classrooms of Alabama State professors they believed had been involved in the local movement, tak- ing notes throughout class in an attempt to intimidate the instructors. Recognizing her teaching job was in jeopardy, Mary Fair Burks wrote a letter to her former pastor expressing her concerns. Claiming “Jo Ann [Robinson], [Lawrence] Reddick and I expect to be fired,” her biggest surprise was that they had not yet lost their jobs. King was disappointed in the ASU president: “I had hoped that Dr. Trenholm would emerge from this total situation as a national hero. If he would only stand up to the Governor and the Board of Education and say that he cannot in all good conscience fire the eleven faculty members who have committed no crime or act of sedition, he would gain support over the nation that he