Thread by @PeteDDavis

We remember Martin Luther King for his cinematic dragon-slaying—his iconic speeches and confrontations—but what’s lost is all the long-haul work that queued up those moments. A thread: <1/18>

King makes clear in Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, just how much time he spent in the mundane work of winning the community’s trust, joining organizations, weaving together coalitions through multiple meetings, and planning gatherings. <2/18>

The whole beginning of his memoir is about the not-so-thrilling work of forming church committees: a religious education committee, a social service committee, a scholarship fundraising committee, and a cultural committee. <3/18>

Early on in Montgomery, he writes, most of his time was spent performing marriages and funerals, preparing the weekly service, visiting the sick, and attending various church planning meetings. “Almost every week I attended from five to ten such group meetings,” he writes. <4/18>

Why was King trusted to lead the boycott? Because he had spent the months leading up to it religiously attending various local organizations’ meetings. He first joined the NAACP’s local branch and helped them with fundraising. <5/18>

He then joined the Alabama Council on Human Relations, an interracial group of reverends helping to fight for racial equality in Alabama. He then started going to meetings for the “Citizens Coordinating Committee,” a group formed to build unity among local leaders. <6/18>

The story we’re told—about how “Rosa Parks sat down and the community stood up”—leaves out the most important part: Parks, King and hundreds of other committed people had put in the week-in, week-out work of sustaining local organizations before the boycott ever started. <7/18>

And that doesn’t even include all the meetings that went into building the organizations that made up the coordinating organizations that hosted the meetings that sustained the boycott. <8/18>

The only reason King’s congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was ready to be politicized is because the church’s prior pastor, Vernon Johns, had been organizing and activating them for years. <9/18>

The only reason there was a Women’s Political Council for King to coordinate with was because nine years prior, forty-one women came together to found it. <10/18>

The local branch of International Bricklayers Union gave King office space—and the only reason they were able to do that was because local bricklayers built and sustained a union hall over the previous four decades. <11/18>

Though she’s remembered as a dragon-slayer, Rosa Parks herself was also a long-haul hero: When she was arrested, she was already a decade into being the elected secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. <12/18>

Parks’s heroic confrontation was the spark—but sparks go nowhere without the long-haul gathering of tinder. <13/18>

The bus boycott ended up lasting 381 days. You can sustain a week of action based on a passionate reaction to a dramatic incident. But to sustain a 13-month long campaign, you need something deeper than reaction—you need commitment. <14/18>

It reminds me of something the organizer Ella Baker once wrote in a report back to her team headquarters in the 1940’s: “I must leave now for one of those small church night meetings which are usually more exhausting than the immediate returns seem to warrant... <15/18>

...but it’s a part of the spade work, so let it be.” Spade work—preparing the soil for action—is what's needed today. <16/18>

We are in the beginning of so many long hauls in America: toward a deeper democracy, toward a sustainable energy system, toward the next Reconstruction. <17/18>

I think many people today are willing to lay down their life for causes bigger than themself. But that's not really what we need today. We need more people, like King, willing to lay down part of their daily life to them. Grab your spades—let's get to work! <18/18>