90 BECOMING KING fied with her situation. They had experienced it all too often.” Though most black residents did not know Parks, the majority of black leaders and professionals did not know the so-called “passive masses.” Before the arrest of Parks and the subsequent planned protest, they had crossed paths primarily in the public sphere. Most black civil rights leaders in Montgomery did not have enough evidence to determine how passive the working class was until this moment, when the masses proved more than ready to get involved.9 The boycott of city buses allowed a disparate African American com- munity to unite to unleash a perfect storm upon white leaders in Mont- gomery. Black professionals saw Rosa Parks as a respectable citizen who was mistreated and abused for conducting herself with silent dignity. No matter how much African Americans in the Jim Crow South had accom- plished, they remained vulnerable second-class citizens subject to the whims of white authority figures. They also saw the opportunity to chal- lenge the dehumanizing system of segregation that affected every black regardless of class or degree of respectability. Meanwhile, the working class bore the brunt of the specific dehumanizing experience of riding buses in Montgomery. They endured the racist abuses of some of the drivers. They identified with how tired and weary Parks was on the night of her arrest. The situation on the city buses was a quality-of-life issue for the working class of Montgomery, and they proved ready to sacrifice to change the situation. On the Sunday morning following Parks’s arrest, King chose to ad- dress the “awful silence of God” with his Dexter congregation. King sug- gested that although throughout history people had “appealed to God in desperate tones” to bring justice, “evil continued to rise to astronomical proportions.” King admitted that, in a world filled with evil and injus- tice, maintaining the necessary faith to fight for change would not be easy. Despite the enormity of the challenge, King called on his congrega- tion to join a citywide, one-day boycott of city buses. While not brush- ing aside experiences to the contrary, King called for action to overcome “the iron feet of oppression.” King’s text for the sermon, found in Isaiah 45:15, asserts, “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” The context of the verse, however, proclaims the creative and redeeming power of God leading to the salvation of Israel and the