A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation: Based on His Experiences Beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1955, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, author Bob Graetz was the young white pastor of a black Lutheran Church in Montgomery. His church and his home were in the black community and he and his wife among the few whites who supported the boycott. Their church and home were both bombed; their lives were threatened often. But Graetz never wavered, and his Montgomery experiences, recounted in rich detail here, shaped a long ministerial career that always emphasized equality and justice issues no matter where his call took him. In addition to Graetz’s boycott memoirs, this book includes provocative chapters on white privilege, black forgiveness, and the present-day challenges for human and civil rights.

ROBERT S. GRAETZ, JR. (1928-2020) served Lutheran churches in four states, always with a ministry dedicated to what his friend Martin Luther King, Jr., termed the ＂beloved community.＂ In retirement, he remained active with numerous progressive organizations and in civil rights causes. With his wife, Jeannie Ellis Graetz, he led study tours of Deep South civil rights sites for U.S. and international students and visitors. The Graetzes lived permanently near McArthur, Ohio, but, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they accepted a 2005-07 appointment as ambassadors-in-residence for the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture at Alabama State University, Montgomery, Alabama.