heart of the civil rights movement and to hold the movement to its difficult course through ten years of frightful tribulations.

Inspired leadership alone, of course, does not explain the movement's notable combination of militancy and moral self-restraint. Its triumphs rested on the more humble achievements of people like King's father, who had managed, over the years, to build a vigorous black community in Southern towns and cities, under the most unpromising conditions. The core of that community was the church, and the civil rights movement was "strong," as Bayard Rustin pointed out, because it was "built upon the most stable institution of the southern Negro community—the Church." The church furnished institutional as well as moral support. In Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, it was the organizational structure of the church, as much as its vision of the promised land, that sustained the movement. The clergy provided indigenous leadership, and the churches served both as channels of communication and as sources of funds. During the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, the churches raised most of the money that sustained a car pool for twelve months. The success of the boycott also depended, initially at least, on the willingness of black cab companies to charge passengers the standard bus fare—a reminder that the black community in the South had other institutional resources besides the church. It had stable families; businesses, newspapers, radio stations, and colleges; and enough buying power, in some localities, to make boycotts an effective economic weapon. "The Negro has enough buying power in Birmingham," King noted, "to make the difference between profit and loss in a business." He attributed the failure of his campaign in Albany, Georgia, partly to the community's lack of economic leverage.

The movement achieved its greatest success wherever it could build on a solid foundation of indigenous institutions and on the middle-class ethic of thrift and responsibility that made them work. Recognizing the importance of an institutional infrastructure in the struggle to achieve dignity and independence, King urged the black community to organize cooperative credit unions, finance companies, and grocery stores. Boycotts of segregated businesses, he pointed out, not only undermined segregation but encouraged Negro enterprise, bringing "economic self-help and autonomy" to the "local community." He preached the dignity of labor and the need to achieve "painstaking excellence" in the performance even of

-394-