“They Are Willing to Walk” 97    mandate. Again ingenuity prevailed, as boycott leaders set up an intricate carpooling system that allowed residents to get the transportation they needed. The car pools served to further unify the community as strangers and casual acquaintances began to spend significant time together each day. Those wealthy enough to own vehicles volunteered to drive working- class citizens, further breaking down barriers between the classes. As they rode, they shared the joys and trials of the boycott with one another. Alabama State College history professor Norman Walton emphasized the significance of the car pool in solidifying the cohesion of the partici- pants: “It has closed the gap between the Negro groups based on edu- cation, income and position. In Montgomery, there is unity, the lowest person doing her humble task, rides to work in a Cadillac, a jalopy or a truck. The college professor talks with the maid and the drunkard to the minister, but with a common interest that brings them together.” These unplanned conversations and burgeoning relationships did as much to 23 solidify the boycott as any speech or mass meeting. Meanwhile King continued to shepherd Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. After a guest speaker filled the Dexter pulpit on December 12, King preached the following three Sundays to his home congregation, including a Christmas sermon entitled “The Light That Shineth amid Darkness.” In the midst of the darkness of white stubbornness, hatred, and exclusion, King emphasized the necessity of love to his congregation that Christmas morning. His words had more force now, however, as his descriptions of darkness were not theological abstractions but mor- ally tangible and politically all too real. Over the coming months, King’s sermons would continue to grow in depth, urgency, and power. A techni- cally accomplished preacher before the boycott, King’s speaking was now imbued with a passion that stirred his congregation, his community, and 24 eventually the nation. Although he was pastor of a silk-stocking church in Montgomery, King’s time at Ebenezer had prepared him for dealing with both the pro- fessional and working-class citizens of Montgomery. His decisions to take on summer jobs as a teen doing manual labor helped him more effectively communicate with those who had depended on the buses for daily trans- portation. Since his arrival at Dexter, he had hoped to attract more working- class and poor blacks to his church. Even if changing the makeup of his