ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the first extensive scholarly examination of The Montgomery Story and archival documents associated with it housed at Swarthmore College's Peace Collection as part of the records of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist Christian organization. It helped King and others to spread the message of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience throughout the South in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The chapter describes the production; distribution; and, to a lesser extent, reception of The Montgomery Story and provide insight into the construction of narrative by historical actors themselves. Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story, a sixteen-page, four-color comic book, connected Montgomery, Alabama to India's struggle for national independence less than ten years earlier. The velocity and global reach of such spreading has increased exponentially, but the paths from person to person are similar to those taken by The Montgomery Story over sixty years from Montgomery to Tahrir Square.
