MONTGOMERY, Ala.: The Rev. Robert Graetz, the only white minister to support the Montgomery bus boycott, died Sunday. He was 92.
His daughter, Meta Ellis, shared the news in a Facebook post from the Southeastern Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The church did not mention a cause of death.
Graetz was the minister of the majority-Black Trinity Lutheran Evangelical Church in Montgomery. Graetz was the only local white clergyman to support the boycott. He and his wife, Jeannie, faced harassment, threats and bombings as a result.
Sparked by the December 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks, the planned one-day boycott of Montgomery City Lines became a 381-day protest of the segregated bus system that ended with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.
The parsonage where the Graetzes…