Dabney N. Montgomery was born in Selma, Alabama on 18 April 1923. He grew up with five of his siblings from his father’s three marriages. Each of those wives died prior to Montgomery’s father. Montgomery’s mother died when he was 14 years of age. Montgomery is the last surviving sibling and views being alive as being a blessing. He grew up in the South in the 1920s and 1930s. There was institutionalized segregation where people of color were treated as second class citizens. White people had to be treated with deference and respect. Society and the restrictions imposed by law and policy kept the rigors of segregation in place. Blacks had to go to the back of a bus or to the back of a room in consideration to whites having the preferred access to all things. People of color had a second place in life. They were taught to accept those conditions. Going to school in the South was a doomed system with separation of blacks and whites. Students never sat side by side. Growing up was tough but Montgomery’s parents were tougher. They taught him to believe that he was as good as anyone else no matter where he sat on the bus. Rosa Parks said she was tired of being tired and rejected the claim to her seat by a white man [Annotator’s Note: Rosa Parks was an early trailblazer and heroine in the civil rights movement in the 1950s when she refused a white persons demand that she move to the back of the bus so her seat would become available.]. When Pearl Harbor was attacked on a Sunday [Annotator’s Note: 7 December 1941], Montgomery was returning from church. He wanted to know who Pearl Harbor was. He knew about the Hawaiian Islands but not the naval facilities there. As he learned more about the sneak attack, he knew that the United States would get into the war. As the family gathered around the radio and listened to the analyst, they knew they were officially in the war. He was 18 years old at the time and had finished school. The trend among his friends was to volunteer for the Army. He attempted to do so because of the worry of whether the country would be attacked. He knew he had to defend the country even though there were entrenched systems with which he did not agree. He was told his name was so high on the list that he just had to wait to be called shortly thereafter. He returned home and waited for the call. He had finished high school and had attended one year of college. Weeks after his attempt to enlist, he was called for induction. He reported to the court house. The men were separated into white and black inductees and not mixed. Those who passed mental and physical examinations were inducted into the armed forces in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Dabney Montgomery was inducted into the United States Army Air Corps and sent to Kessler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi for basic training. It was perhaps the beginning of May 1943. After basic, the determination was made to send the trainee to either the Air Corps or the Army. Montgomery was selected for special quartermaster training in Army supplies. He attended Quartermaster-Supply School in Petersburg, Virginia at Camp Lee. He studied day and night for a number of weeks to learn the quartermaster system of supply and demand. After the course, three men were picked to go to Oscoda, Michigan to become a component of the Tuskegee Airmen. They were to aid in the air war. The War Department had conducted a study in about April 1918 concerning the ability of black men to learn the complexities of flying. The findings of those educated men stated that the subjects could not comprehend the necessities involved. That was a wasteful evaluation because of the elimination of the potential of so many people. The black press and Mrs. Roosevelt [Annotator’s Note: President Franklin Roosevelt’s first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.] took exception to the findings and pressed to allow blacks to fly in combat. One very bright young black man who was a West Point graduate also pressed the issue. That was B.O. Davis who had a father who was the first black general. Davis was a tough man who really wanted to fly. He went through the silent treatment at the Point. He was only spoken to in a classroom setting. He was disregarded outside the class. He was completely alone in the mess hall and in his billeting. It toughened him up. He did not cry about mistreatment. Despite the segregation, he was 37 in a class of over 280 students. He was tough and he passed that toughness to the men he trained. He never smiled. In Oscoda, Montgomery joined the group of black soldiers who were involved in aviation and support of the flyers. The weather was very cold there as it was near the Canadian border. The men packed to go overseas. They were furloughed for a week or two to go home to say goodbye to family and friends. On the trip back to Selma, Montgomery was on a train and found himself in a chow line. He was the only black man in the line. A waiter came to him and asked that he followed him. The waiter set him down and isolated him from others in a corner of the dining car. A black curtain was pulled down so that he would not be seen eating in the same area as whites. Montgomery asked the waiter why he did so. Montgomery was used to that treatment in the South. After three years of fighting overseas in Italy, Montgomery returned home to find that nothing had changed at home. Despite his time with the 1051st Quartermasters of the 96th Air Service Group attached to the 332nd Fighter Group [Annotator’s Note: Tuskegee Airmen], things were no different. He found he was excluded access to many areas even though he had just been honorably discharged.

Dabney Montgomery arrived in Bari, Italy in January 1944. It was the day after a heavy German bombardment. There were numerous ships in the harbor. There was no place for the troops to billet. They spent the night on a mountainside. It started raining. The men had no protection from the weather. Fires could not be lit. Tents could not be pitched. The men had to stand there all night. It was miserable. They made it through the experience. When the troops finally settled in southern Italy, Mount Vesuvius erupted with fire and resulting damage. Soot, smoke and ash blew into their tents. The men had to wear gas masks for protection. The German aircraft were bombing the troops. The men fought against such odds. They decided not to give up but lift the American flag despite it all. The black troops were fighting a double fight [Annotator’s Note: they fought against not only the Axis but also institutionalized segregation and bigotry.]. Adolf Hitler was the biggest bully, but the Allies stood up to him. Montgomery was in Italy from January 1944 to the end of the war. He returned home for his discharge in December 1945. Montgomery was responsible for supplying trucks with loads of food and clothing. He had to provide them with the requisitioned requirements for supplies. The flyers could not operate without the efforts of those in ground mechanics and supply. For every flyer, there were about 15 men on the ground to support them. Everyone worked for a common cause. There were 159 German planes destroyed at the cost of 66 Tuskegee planes. The tails of the Tuskegee planes were painted red. The orders came to the flyers that the priority was to protect the bombers not just to shoot down enemy fighters. For every bomber saved, eight to ten flight crewmen would be there for the next mission. It was not just about becoming a fighter ace but to protect fellow airmen in those bombers. Montgomery returned home from the war in December 1945.

Dabney Montgomery returned home and learned quickly about the persistence of segregation in his homeland. The G.I. Bill was a great benefit for the veterans. It enabled a vast majority of them to attend college. Montgomery attended Livingston College and majored in religious education. He received his BA degree but did not feel the calling to become a preacher. Instead, in 1949, he heard a voice telling him that if the law of the state did not define peace, he would have to break the segregation laws. The voice told him that he would not succeed, but he had to return to Selma. In 1955, Rosa Parks told the white man that she would not give up her seat to him because she was too tired [Annotator’s Note: Rosa Parks was an early trailblazer and heroine in the civil rights movement in the 1950s when she refused a white person’s demand that she move to the back of the bus so her seat would become available.]. Montgomery tried to get his Masters Degree in economics from a college in Michigan, but he failed. He tried again in Detroit but failed again. He desired to return to Selma as a peacemaker. He wanted to take art back to his hometown so he decided to study ballet. He wanted to teach that in the high school as a work of art to the students. They had not been exposed much to ballet in Selma. He enrolled in ballet studies at the Boston Conservatory of Music. He started late in life at 30 years old. He worked eight hours a day in the hotel to pay his tuition. He broke his left foot and he was put in a lower leg cast. He still wanted to return to Selma and teach ballet. While in recovery, he decided to take a trip to Africa to meet his forefathers. He thought the trip might change the urge to go back to Selma. This was long before Martin Luther King who was still in college in Georgia.

Dabney Montgomery rode from Berlin, Germany through Paris to join a group of Americans there. They proceeded into North Africa and straight across to Egypt. He experienced a beautiful service in Istanbul, Turkey. It was a wonderful experience. He returned through Italy and France to London. He took a return voyage back to Boston. He went to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and saw a ballet. He was single and could manage his money well. He enrolled in a school of classical ballet at the top of the Metropolitan Opera. He had previously taken flamenco dancing and waltz. That was emotional dancing that he found to be very enjoyable. He had an urge to return to Selma and contacted his advisor named John Sarawhite [Annotator’s Note: surname spelling could not be confirmed] from the Hood Seminary. His advisor told him that he should go back and break the law peacefully. They met at a Harvard for a two day seminar concerning how to end segregation. Montgomery presented his theory on peacefully breaking unjust laws to the group. It was quickly passed over for the next speaker. Montgomery returned to Selma in 1957. He went to church on Mother’s Day. He had been advised to call a group of people together and tell them what he was going to do and then do it. There was a concerned that he would be killed for it but he was advised to follow his conscience.

Dabney Montgomery had worked out his theory of peaceful protest against unjust segregationist laws well before the civil rights movement came to that same conclusion in the middle of the 1950s. Civil rights protesters rode buses into the South with black youngsters in the front and whites in the back of the bus. Montgomery went to Selma and let it be known that he was there to break the law in a peaceful way. They knew exactly what he was up to when he told people in the Clinton Chapel AME on Green Street in Selma. The members of the congregation told him that their preacher was in Boston and requested that Montgomery bring his sermon to them. He gladly agreed. It was just the chance he needed. He pulled out his theory about the greater emphasis on science and engineering all the while that black schools are being closed down thus eliminating the potential of the Negro mind to grow and succeed in those fields. That was a means to conquer and control them. A Department of Education should be created. There was not one at that time. That would make the nation stronger. There were 40 people in the church that night. They disagreed with Montgomery’s theory of breaking the law even if it was unjust. In the meantime, he left the church and went to the captain of the police who was a racist. They would kill if a segregationist law was broken. Montgomery confronted the captain with four of his officers nearby. He told them that he had come from New York City to break the segregationist law. The captain said to throw him out. The policemen did so. It was late at night and anything could happen to a black man on the street at that time. Montgomery sat down and thought about the Beethoven symphonies and one in particular that had the theme of Joy. He asked God for advice. As that was happening, a man turned the corner and asked Montgomery if he realized the danger he was in by being out so late. Montgomery requested a ride home. When he talked to his father about his thoughts, his parent was not pleased. His father told the Chief of Police that his son was shell shocked from World War Two. He went on to say that his son had been living in New York and had come back home and started trouble. Montgomery heard the response of his father and the other black people that he had come to help. They said that they were not ready for that type of help. Montgomery returned to New York City and then Martin Luther King came to Selma. When the civil rights protesters were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Montgomery was watching on television. At that point, Montgomery returned to participate in the protest marches. Montgomery’s father knew his son would return. After he returned, Montgomery served as a bodyguard for Dr. King and marched with him from Selma to Montgomery. Changes could be seen coming over the South. The Voter Rights Act was passed and many were voting who never did before. Montgomery retired in 1988 from the New York City Housing Authority. He then took on a social workers job called Project Find for two years until 1991. He has been on Social Security ever since.

Dabney Montgomery remembers the night that Mount Vesuvius erupted [Annotator’s Note: he was serving with the Tuskegee Airmen in Italy at the time.]. He remembers an interpretation by the government that blacks could not fight. They could and did fight. The war changed him from a violent to nonviolent approach to problem solving. Peace, love and understanding are needed in the world now. Cooperation is needed to provide joy to the world. His service gave him strength and energy. His group was setting records while they were told they could not fight. They even received the Congressional Gold Medal for their efforts. World War Two means more freedom today and an even greater desire for more freedom. It gave people an uplift. Montgomery came back [Annotator’s Note: he returned to his hometown—Selma, Alabama] and joined Martin Luther King. He was spat upon, but he persevered. Education under God about World War Two is very important. Education under God is the answer. Advances in technology to make tanks and planes are not justifiable for the good of people. Education under God provides for the good of people.