The Rev. Robert S. Graetz was virtually alone among Montgomery\u2019s white ministers in supporting the bus boycott that helped galvanize the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when the bombings began.<\/p>\n
As the white pastor at an all-black Lutheran church in Alabama in the 1950s, Mr. Graetz was just 28 years old when he became a recurring target for the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe noise awakened us,\u201d Rosa Parks, who was a neighbor of the Graetz family, wrote of a 1957 attack.<\/p>\n
In the brief, handwritten document, Mrs. Parks described decades later how she and her husband went quickly to the Graetz family\u2019s home after the bombing. The area had been roped off by the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said we could not enter. Rev. Graetz spoke to me and said, \u2018Come in Brother Parks and Mrs. Parks,\u2019\u201d she added. \u201cWe went and offered to help. We began sweeping the floor and picking up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n He was virtually alone among Montgomery\u2019s white ministers in supporting the bus boycott. That's when the bombings began. https:\/\/t.co\/ittfECXPqF<\/a><\/p>\n — NYT National News (@NYTNational) August 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n