Robert Graetz, Only White Pastor To Back Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dies At 92

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September 22nd, 2020

In this May 28, 1957 photo, Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, left, Rev. Robert S. Graetz, center, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talk outside the witness room during a bombing trial in Montgomery, Ala. Abernathy’s church and home were bombed as well as the home of Graetz, who had an all-Black congregation.

Associated Press

The Lutheran church did not have many ordained African American ministers in 1955, so when a call went out that year for a new Lutheran pastor to serve a majority Black congregation in Montgomery, Ala., it was answered by a white clergyman in Ohio, the Rev. Robert Graetz.

Graetz and his wife, Jeannie, already had a record of church-based civil rights activism, and some Lutheran authorities worried that Graetz might become ensnarled in the developing racial unrest in Montgomery, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor.

“He had to promise he would not start trouble,” Jeannie Graetz recalled in a 2019 interview with NPR. “Well, he did not start the trouble. He just joined the trouble.”

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