Robert Graetz

Robert Sylvester Graetz Jr. (May 16, 1928 – September 20, 2020) was a Lutheran clergyman who, as the white pastor of a black congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, openly supported the Montgomery bus boycott, a landmark event of the civil rights movement.

Biography Graetz, of German descent, was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and educated in Columbus, Ohio. His father was an engineer with the Libbey-Owens-Ford Co. he started a "campus race relations club"; Walter White, the leader of the NAACP, was one of the club's speakers. Graetz received a B.D. in 1955 from Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1958, the family moved back to Columbus, where Graetz became the minister of another Black church. Over the years that followed, he worked in Ohio, Kentucky, California, and Washington DC, where he spent 13 years as a lobbyist for marginalized individuals.

Graetz, who had Parkinson's disease and had been in hospice care for some time, died at his home in Montgomery on September 20, 2020.

Role in civil rights movement Graetz's first full-time job as pastor was to a Black congregation, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Montgomery. He began working there in 1953, the year of the Montgomery bus boycott. A personal friend of Rosa Parks, Graetz became secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization founded to organize and support the boycott. The Sunday after Parks was arrested and the boycott began, he told his congregation, "Let’s try to make this boycott as effective as possible because it won’t be any boycott if half of us ride the buses and half don’t ride. So if we’re going to do it, let’s make a good job of it.” Graetz's support of the movement also included appearing at meetings led by Martin Luther King Jr.

While a few other whites in Montgomery supported the boycott, Graetz was the only white clergyman who did so. sugar was poured into the gas tank of their car, they received death threats, some of which were directed against their children, and bombs were planted at their home on three occasions; the largest, comprising 11 sticks of dynamite, did not explode.

Graetz wrote A White Preacher's Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Black Belt Press, September 1999. ) about his experiences. The book They Walked to Freedom 1955–1956: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Kenneth M. Hare (Sports Publishing LLC, 2005. ) contains a first-person account of his experiences as well as photographs of Graetz with King and others.

Books and publications

A Congregational Guide to Human Relations, 1964 "An Informed Church Serves a Diverse Society", chapter in The Church in a Diverse Society, ed. L.W. Halvorson, Augsburg, 1964 Monthly columnist for Columbus, Ohio, Diocese Catholic Times (1973–87) Montgomery – a White Preacher's Memoir, Chicago: Augsburg Fortress, 1991 (re-published as A White Preacher's Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott. Black Belt Press, September 1999. A White Preacher's Message on Race And Reconciliation: Based on His Experiences Beginning With the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Montgomery: New South Books, 2006.

Awards

Russwurm Award, National Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, 1957 Selma Humanitarian Award, from the producers and cast of the musical "Selma," about life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., 1976 Distinguished Alumnus, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 1986 Doctor of Humanities, Capital University, 1990 Ohio Humanitarian Award, 1993, in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day celebration (Ohio) Governor's Humanitarian Award, 1997, in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day celebration