Rev. Robert S. & Jean Graetz

Robert S. Graetz Jr., born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1928, studied theology at Capital University and Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in Ohio and was active in campus social justice causes and in the Columbus chapter of the NAACP. Jean Ellis, born on a farm near East Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1929, was a student at Capital University when she met him. They married in 1951 and had seven children. The couple arrived in Montgomery in 1955, where Rev. Graetz pastored the predominantly African American congregation of Trinity Lutheran Church. Committed to equality, Robert and Jean Graetz were among the small group of whites who supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott and were confidants of important figures in the yearlong effort, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Rev. Graetz served as secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association, organized to sustain the boycott, and the Trinity parsonage where they lived was bombed twice. After the Lutheran church transferred Rev. Graetz in 1957, they frequently returned to Alabama and took part in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. They remained beacons in the fight for equality wherever they were, returned to Montgomery in 2005, lived out their final years in this home, and died three months apart in 2020.

Montgomery, Alabama · United States