The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Robert Graetz, only White minister to join Montgomery bus boycott, dies at 92

By
September 21, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. EDT
The Revs. Ralph D. Abernathy, left, Robert S. Graetz and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957. Rev. Graetz was the only White member of the clergy to participate in the Montgomery bus boycott, which he helped King, Abernathy and other Black community leaders organize. (AP)

The Rev. Robert S. Graetz was 27, recently ordained in the Lutheran church, when he received his first full-time assignment. It was 1955, and with a shortage of African American ministers, Lutheran officials decided to send the White clergyman to a predominantly Black church in Montgomery, Ala.

Rev. Graetz had demonstrated a growing interest in civil rights, joining the NAACP while in college and preaching to a small, majority-Black congregation in Los Angeles as an intern. Before sending him to Alabama, church elders asked him to promise not to “start any trouble.”