Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

January 30, 2004

"Who started the Montgomery boycotts? Rosa Parks. Ed Nixon, a labor leader for the sleeping car porters, started the boycotts. People start the movement. And then they go out into the streets to find a Martin Luther King Jr. The miracle of Montgomery is that King was ready when the people called."

-- Lerone Bennett, senior editor of Ebony magazine and classmate of Martin Luther King Jr. at Morehouse College, Atlanta, in the late 1940s. Bennett spoke on campus Jan. 22 as part of the 2004 King observance.
Photo by Bob Elbert.