Notes to Pages 68–71 205    time. Although King undoubtedly impressed them, they would always view King through the lens of his civil rights leadership, coloring their earliest recollections. Rosa Parks, minutes, Montgomery branch meeting, January 9, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers (NN-Sc). Nixon, interview by Lumpkin. In this interview, Nixon claimed he heard King speak on the second Sunday in August 1955. While King was unanimously elected to the branch’s execu- tive committee at that meeting, there is no indication in the very thorough minutes of the event that King offered any remarks, suggesting Nixon was re- calling his response to this January speech (Rosa Parks, minutes, Montgom- ery branch executive committee meeting, August 14, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers, [NN-Sc]). Johnnie Carr, interview by Steven M. Millner, July 17, 1977, in Garrow, ed. The Walking City, 529. Carr also claims she first heard King in August 1955, but credits the Dexter deacon R. D. Nesbitt with introducing King. In this January meeting, however, King was intro- duced by Ralph Abernathy. Carr may have remembered King’s June address to the NAACP, when he was introduced by Nesbitt (Rosa Parks, minutes, mass meeting at First CME Church, June 19, 1955, Montgomery NAACP Papers [NN-Sc]). 31. Montgomery Advertiser, January 12, 1955. 32. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, “Social and Political Action Com- mittee Digest, Number 2,” January 1955, Folder 15, Box 77, King Papers, Boston University; King Jr., Stride toward Freedom, 34–35. 33. Alabama Tribune, January 28, 1955. 34. Virginia Durr to Corliss Lamont, February 9, 1955, in Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer, 81. 35. “Negroes’ Most Urgent Needs,” LPR 127, Baskin Papers. 36. Thornton, Dividing Lines, 49. 37. The Montgomery Advertiser city editor Joe Azbell devoted a signifi- cant portion of his March 1, 1955, editorial to the housing dilemma faced by the city’s African American residents. Noting that some believed “the Negro housing situation will become so critical this year some move will have to be started to open new subdivisions,” Azbell referenced James Holt, the president of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association, who called the housing crisis for blacks in Montgomery the largest housing problem the city faced.” The editor suggested no possible solutions to the problem (Joe Azbell, “City Limits,” Montgomery Advertiser, March 1, 1955). Montgomery Advertiser, March 20, 1955; J. Mills Thornton, “Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956,” in Garrow, ed., The Walk- ing City, 336. Thornton examines the demographic and political shifts that occurred in Montgomery in the 1950s. He notes that the “Demographic