Mary Jo Smiley

By Jannell McGrew
Montgomery Advertiser

She clutched the big, black rectangular scrapbook close to her chest and she walked gingerly with it.

The Rev. Mary Jo Smiley rediscovered her precious safe keep at home. Its pages are yellowing. The clippings are some she cut out herself nearly 50 years ago. These are original clips from newspaper articles written about the civil rights struggle.

She had been cleaning out her home when her scrapbook surfaced.

"I had no idea what a treasure it would be today," she said. "I had forgotten all about it. I have to be very careful with them (the pages of the scrapbook) because they are falling apart."

She turned the time-worn pages slowly, carefully going over every faded sheet.

Like those pages, her memories of some things -- specific things like some peoples' names -- too have faded, but the fire of determination she felt then is fresh in her mind.

Smiley, like many supporters of the boycott then, lent her support by transporting boycotters to and from work and to other places they needed to go.

The boycott was not just about refusing to ride the buses to work, she pointed out, it was about refusing to ride the buses completely. That meant not riding the bus to go downtown to do business, to pay bills, to go anywhere at all.

"We had a car," Smiley said. "That's what we used. My specific job was to take them to work and bring them back home at a certain hour. I was proud to do it. I was proud."

And on Dec. 5, 1955, the first day Montgomery city buses rolled without their black patrons, Smiley said "I could not believe the overall response that people gave.,"

Smiley is a member of Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the congregation that was once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She knew King and she remembers the bus boycott and its young leader.

"Every movement has leaders, and we had excellent ones at that time," she said. "The people of Montgomery made that boycott successful. The leaders had the strategy, but the people had the strength."

She remembers her role in transporting boycotters. She was even arrested.

"They came and took me to jail," she said. But the boybott's leaders had a plan that whenever someone was arrested, they would be bailed out of jail as soon as possible. E.D. Nixon, a key figure during the boycott, arranged for her release.

"Before I could really get frightened, E.D. Nixon was there and took me home," she said.

"We had a network that was out of sight," Smiley said.

They went to court over the matter, she recalled, but the judge threw the case out. Smiley can't recall the judge's name, but said "everybody knew he was a fair man."