Joe Azbell

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 12, he ran away from home. He hitchhiked his way across the United States and Mexico, earning a living by picking cotton, washing dishes and selling and printing newspapers. He then joined the United States Army Air Corps where he scored well on the Army General Classification Test. He was the top of his class at the Air Force's administration school and was sent to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery. He was the founder and editor of the Air University Dispatch, the official newspaper for the base. After his military service ended in 1946, Azbell moved to Selma where he founded his own newspaper. While in Selma, he also began writing speeches for pro-integration Governor Jim Folsom. He later moved to Montgomery, where he became the city editor for the Montgomery Advertiser. In his spare time, Azbell provided transport to hospitals for black children stricken with polio, as most members of the black community did not own a car.

In 1954, Azbell received an honorary doctorate from Selma University, a historically black college.

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".