Notes Prologue 1. Among works that have explored the impact of Montgomery on the broader civil rights movement, see Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; Branch, Parting the Waters; Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America; Garrow, Bearing the Cross; and D. Williams, with Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels. Several recent works have elevated the roles played by Jo Ann Robinson, Mary Fair Burks, Rosa Parks, and E. D. Nixon in laying the groundwork for the bus boycott. See, for instance, Garrow, ed., The Mont- gomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It; Dyson, I May Not Get There with You, 202–4; Burns, To The Mountaintop, 19–25; and D. Williams, with Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels. 2. Over the past few decades, several historians have examined the significant role people in local communities played in preparing the way for and leading the civil rights movement. Others have also helpfully ex- amined the connections of labor to the civil rights movement. See, for example, Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom; Dittmer, Local People; Fair- clough, Race and Democracy; Eick, Dissent in Wichita; Whitaker, Race Work; Theoharis and Woodard, eds., Groundwork; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism; and Minchin, The Color of Work. 3. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 417–18. 4. Pittsburgh Courier, December 7, 1957. 5. Eskew, But for Birmingham. Over the last few years of King’s life, he began to participate more directly in efforts to bring about economic justice, as evidenced in his support for the striking Memphis sanitation workers and in his organization of the interracial Poor People’s Campaign. 6. Branch, Parting the Waters, 558. 7. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It; Crawford, Rouse, and Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement. For more on the contributions of women to the struggle, see Collier- Thomas and Franklin, Sisters in the Struggle. For a detailed study of the life and contributions of Ella Baker, see Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom 187