Charlie Hardy

By Topher Sanders
Montgomery Advertiser

Charlie Hardy, 64, grew up fast in the area of Montgomery now known as Trenholm Court.

"I had a very brief childhood because I was working all the time," said Hardy, who now lives and works in Tuskegee. "I paid taxes for the business and made deliveries on my own. My father had a lot of confidence in me and it helped me develop."

Hardy's family owned E & M Grocery on the corner of Decatur Street and Clisby Park in the 1950s.

The Hardys allowed their grocery store to be used as a gathering place for people to wait for their rides and coordinate travel plans during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

"You had a coming together of persons from every [level] of the African-American community without respect to what their station in life might have been," Hardy said. "All of these people came across all lines and made the movement a success."

Hardy would tend to the store as people waited for their rides.

"There was some light banter about jobs and current events, but for the most part the conversations were focused on the success of the movement," Hardy said.

Charlie Hardy's father, William Hardy, didn't hesitate to use the source of his family's livelihood to assist the boycott, despite possible retaliation.

"He didn't hesitate because he was already a part of all the players in the movement," Hardy said.

Williams Hardy was close to E.D. Nixon, whom many call the father of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

"He felt we needed to find a way that we could best help the movement, so he told people that on days when it was cold or raining, people could come down to the store and wait until their ride came," Hardy said. "We had a phone so we were able to get calls in and out on who needed transportation and communicate with the headquarters at Posey Parking Lot."

Charlie Hardy attended every mass meeting from December 1955, to the end of the boycott.

He drove his mother, Sarah Hardy, and her friends to and from the meetings.

"They would talk about how nobody is riding the buses," Hardy said, recalling the conversations his mother and her friends would have. "They would encourage one another to stay strong."

While the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled throughout the country raising funds for the boycott, those in Montgomery worked to ensure his efforts were rewarded with strong support when he came home.

"My mother was on a telephone committee; each one of those persons had a group of people they were suppose to call any time Dr. King was going to be in town for a Monday night meeting," Hardy said. "They thought the best reward they could give Dr. King was to show him their appreciation by being present en masse when he was in town."

Hardy has several memories of King but one, he said, displays King's composed temperament that permeated everyone in the boycott and allowed it to remain steadfast.

"The night that King's home was bombed, we had just left the mass meeting," Hardy said. "When we got home we got a phone call that Dr. King's home had been bombed. My dad said, 'I need to go now.' So he got himself fortified, I got myself fortified and we got in the car."

Hardy said he and his father armed themselves because they weren't sure what to expect.

Hardy described the scene on Jackson Street, where King lived.

"Jackson Street that night was crowded with African-Americans and my father and I weren't the only ones that came fortified," Hardy said. "The street was full of fortified people. The police were saying, 'Get back, get back.' But that was the problem, we had already gotten back too far for too long so we were not getting back any more. The press of the crowd had backed the police up to the porch of the parsonage."

What happened next Hardy calls "the defining moment in the movement."

When King came out on the porch, he had his hands up in a yielding position.

"He said, 'All right, all right. I am not hurt, Coretta's not hurt, Yolanda is not hurt,'" Hardy recalled of King's words. "'I just want you to go on home.'"

It was not just King's words, but his ease that persuaded the crowd.

"Every phase of his body language allowed us to stay in control and accept what he said," Hardy said. "He disarmed every bit of [our aggression] and there was no problems in the street that night because of the temperament of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If he had not done this, the story would not have ended the way it did."