Azbell was born in 1927 in Texas near the Oklahoma border. When Azbell was 7, his father died and his mother struggled to support her large family alone. At the age of 13, he ran away from home. {{external media In 1956, local community leader
E. D. Nixon gave Azbell a pamphlet by the
Montgomery Improvement Association calling for a bus boycott. He published it on the front page of the
Montgomery Advertiser, alerting local residents to begin the
Montgomery bus boycott. Journalist
Ted Poston later called Azbell the father of the bus boycott as Poston believed that many in the African-American community were unaware of the planned boycott prior to publication. Azbell interviewed many civil rights figures of the day such as
Martin Luther King Jr.,
Ralph Abernathy,
A. Philip Randolph and
Rufus Lewis. He was the first reporter on the scene after King's home was bombed on January 30, 1956, and the first on the scene when E.D. Nixon's house was bombed two days later. Azbell later testified in King's favor when he was on trial in
State of Alabama V. M. L. King, Jr. for inciting the boycott. Azbell also was a speechwriter for
George Wallace. He developed Wallace's presidential campaign slogan "Send them a message". Azbell became "obsessed with the belief that the (Communist) Party had created a vast conspiracy operating through America's black community" that would lead to a race war. By the mid-1960s, Azbell's admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. had turned to the conviction that King was a danger to American society. In an analysis he shared with Wallace in "an ongoing dialogue," Azbell came to believe that King had manipulated public opinion by portraying their movement as one of unsophisticated Alabama police officers versus prayerful and forgiving blacks. He saw civil disturbances in Northern cities as unmasking the reality that, he wrote, "the remainder of the nation tasted the fear" of racial disorder. In 1986, at a 30th anniversary commemoration of the Montgomery bus boycott, Azbell "was credited with providing much needed publicity for the boycott." Azbell died in Montgomery, Alabama on September 30, 1995. == External links ==