“Bigger Than Montgomery” 161    “they had the vision to see that this struggle is bigger than Montgomery. And they have been willing to share me with this nation and with the world.” King had dedicated more and more time beyond the local com- munity, traveling nearly every week. While the local struggle frayed at the edges, he found appreciative national audiences eager to hear his speeches and contribute to the cause of civil rights. King had found that sometimes the bigger, broader, more idealistic struggles were easier to fight than the tedious, slow, grassroots struggles of the local community. Significantly, in a speech on how the community should proceed, he avoided identify- ing specific local initiatives. King naturally gravitated to issues and battles 22 that were “bigger than Montgomery.” Reporter Trezzvant W. Anderson of the prominent black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier wrote a series of articles on the situation in Mont- gomery a year after the boycott’s completion. His first article argued that press coverage of the boycott had “projected into a position of world eminence . . . a young Georgia-born Negro minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was named to head the movement strictly by force of circumstances and not by any planned action.” Anderson claimed the “real dynamo” that launched the protest was Nixon, who had been “the true leader of Montgomery’s Negroes over a span of a quarter century.” According to Anderson, King’s international prominence had resulted in “some deep scars on Montgomery Negroes. There are scars which will never be healed in our lifetime, all growing out of that unfortunate im- balance which disregards the sacrifices and toils of all and focuses on one 23 individual while others work hard, if not harder.” Anderson also questioned the true objectives of the protest. In an in- terview, King told Anderson that the boycott “cannot be said to have had a purpose in the sense that it was planned from the beginning to achieve a certain end. It is easy to see and understand this when one remembers that the MIA is a ‘spontaneous outgrowth’ from a precipitant incident— the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks. The protest continued as an expression of the dissatisfaction among Negroes for the discourteous treatment which they received in a system which allowed them to be segregated against.” King also reflected that “the movement took on a characteristic of love for one’s enemies and non-violent resistance which captured the imagi- nation of men throughout the world. The purpose from this moment