[1] He hitchhiked his way across the United States and Mexico, earning a living by picking cotton, washing dishes and selling and printing newspapers.
[2] In 1956, local community leader E. D. Nixon gave Azbell a pamphlet by the Montgomery Improvement Association calling for a bus boycott.
[3] Azbell interviewed many civil rights figures of the day such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, A. Philip Randolph and Rufus Lewis.
[5] 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.
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.