160 BECOMING KING would rather die than hate you.” He maintained the belief that “through the power of this love somewhere men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed. And then we will be in God’s kingdom.” For King, the language and tactics of nonviolence became a vehicle to express a more consistent and enduring commitment to the radical love ethic found in 20 the teachings of Jesus. An MIA newsletter penned by Jo Ann Robinson demonstrated the difficulty of embodying genuine love for one’s enemies in Montgomery. Although she recognized that both races seemed to have accepted inte- grated buses in Montgomery, Robinson also acknowledged that the MIA faced “a dark future just now, with some conditions getting worse, with no obvious efforts on the part of proper authorities to inaugurate ‘the equalization plan’ in their so-called separate-but-equal doctrine.” Several events led to Robinson’s negative assessment, including a gerrymander- ing of nearby Tuskegee that had resulted in nearly twenty-seven thousand blacks being zoned out of the city limits, preventing them from voting in local elections. In Montgomery, city architects had recently designed a $900,000 library for whites while only allotting $100,000 for a branch library for blacks. The city failed to provide adequate park and recreation facilities for Montgomery’s African American community. Robinson also noted the recent arrest of Fred Gray for sitting in the white section of the Montgomery Airport, the recent firings of African American employees from grocery stores and as truck drivers, and the stiff resistance by elec- 21 tion officials when blacks attempted to register to vote. Although the MIA failed to gain any real traction in 1957, they went ahead with their “Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change” on the second anniversary of the boycott’s commencement. King offered a key- note address titled “Some Things We Must Do.” In his opening com- ments, King applauded the corporate commitment of Montgomery’s African American community, noting over the past year he had received more than sixty awards, but “the award really should be duplicated in about fifty thousand awards. Montgomery is not a drama with one ac- tor, but it is a drama with fifty thousand actors, each playing their parts amazingly well.” After offering appreciation to fellow clergy and his wife, Coretta, King took a moment to thank the members of Dexter who “haven’t had much of a pastor the last two years” but did not complain as