by Gerald Boerner
“Don’t ride the bus to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday…”
— Leaflet distributed to Black community in Montgomery, AL
“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”
— Rosa Parks
“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in. (on refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white male)”
— Rosa Parks
“I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move.”
— Rosa Parks
“Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.”
— Rosa Parks
“Fundamental to studies of citizenship is the need to get beyond the mythology of change occurring through the actions of one super hero.”
— BecomingHistorians.org Web Site
“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”
— Rosa Parks
“I didn’t want to pay my fare and then go around the back door, because many times, even if you did that, you might not get on the bus at all. They’d probably shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there.”
— Rosa Parks
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city’s policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and others, as listed below. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s black population who were the drivers of the boycott were also the bulk of the system’s ridership. The ensuing struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal ruling took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
Method of segregation on Montgomery buses
Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If another black person boarded the bus, he was required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back. Sometimes the bus-drivers would pull away before black passengers were able to reboard.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was a seamstress by profession and secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. Shortly before being arrested on December 1, 1955, she had completed a course in “Race Relations” at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where non-violent civil-disobedience had been discussed as a tactic.
Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting in the front-most row for black people. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver, James F. Blake, told everyone in her row to move back to create a new row for the whites. While all of the other colored people in her row complied, Rosa refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver’s seat assignments, as city ordinance did not explicitly mandate segregation, but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats.
The National City Lines bus, No. 2857, on which Rosa Parks was riding before she was arrested (a GM “old-look” transit bus, serial number 1132), is now a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.
When found guilty on December 5, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed. The boycott was triggered by her arrest. As a result, Rosa Parks is considered one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement.
E.D. Nixon
Some kind of action against segregation had been in the works for some time before Rosa Parks’ arrest, under the leadership of E.D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Nixon intended that her arrest be a test case to allow Montgomery’s black citizens to challenge segregation on the city’s public buses.
With this goal, community leaders had been waiting for the right person to be arrested, a person who would anger the black community into action, who would agree to test the segregation laws in court, and who, most importantly, was “above reproach.” When fifteen year old Claudette Colvin was arrested early in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, E.D. Nixon thought he had found the perfect person, but the teenager turned out to be pregnant. Nixon later explained, “I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with.” Parks, however, was a good candidate because of her employment and marital status, along with her good standing in the community.
Between Parks’ arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s church. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work schedule, he arranged that no election of a leader for the proposed boycott would take place until his return. When he returned he caucused with Ralph Abernathy and Rev. E.N. French to name the association to lead the boycott (they selected the ‘Montgomery Improvement Association’ (“MIA”)) to the city, and select King (Nixon’s choice) to lead the boycott. Nixon wanted King to lead the boycott because the young minister was new to Montgomery and the city fathers had not had time to intimidate him.
At a subsequent, larger meeting of ministers, Nixon’s agenda was threatened by the clergy-men’s reluctance to support the campaign. Nixon was indignant, pointing out that their poor congregations worked to put money into the collection plates so these ministers could live well, and when those congregations needed the clergy to stand up for them, those comfortable ministers refused to do so. Nixon threatened to reveal the ministers’ cowardice to the black community, and King spoke up, denying he was afraid to support the boycott. King agreed to lead the MIA, and Nixon was elected its treasurer.
Boycott
On the night of Rosa Parks’ arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women’s Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery’s black community which read as follows:
“Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”
The next morning at a church meeting led by the new MIA head, King, a citywide boycott of public transit was proposed to demand a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses. Such a line would have meant that if the white section of the bus was oversubscribed, whites would have to stand; blacks would not be forced to remit their seats to whites.
This demand was a compromise for the leaders of the boycott who believed that the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept it rather than a demand for a full integration of the buses. In this respect, the MIA leadership followed the pattern of earlier boycott campaigns in the Deep South during the 1950s. A prime example was the successful boycott a few years earlier of service stations in Mississippi for refusing to provide restrooms for blacks. The organizer of that campaign, T. R. M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken on the brutal slaying of Emmett Till as King’s guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only four days before Parks’s arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.
Victory
Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted, and the boycott officially ended December 20, 1956.
The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. Martin Luther King, Jr. capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision. The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had ramifications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses and provided more than just a positive answer to the Supreme Court’s action against racial segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott reverberated throughout the United States and stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement.
The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories and gave Martin Luther King, Jr. the national attention that made him one of the prime leaders of the cause.
Other Events on this Day
- In 1782…
Martin Van Buren, the eighth U.S. president, is born in Kinderhook, New York. - In 1831…
Former president John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the U.S. House as a representative of Massachusetts. - In 1848…
President James K. Polk helps trigger the 1849 Gold Rush when he confirms the discovery of gold in California. - In 1933…
The Twenty-first Amendment, ending Prohibition, is ratified. - In 1955…
Prompted by the arrest of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott begins.
Dates and events based on:
William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)
Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:
The Montgomery Bus Boycott that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott
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