Montgomery Bus Boycott

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Image:Rosaparksarrested.jpeg

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political protest campaign in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. The ensuing struggle eventually led to a United States Supreme Court decision on November 13, 1956, that declared illegal the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses.

Contents

Rosa Parks

Main article: Rosa Parks

The boycott was precipitated by Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat in favor of a white passenger. In Montgomery, the dividing line between the front seats reserved for white passengers and the back ones reserved for black passengers was not fixed. When the front of the bus was full, the driver could order black passengers sitting towards the front of the bus to surrender their seat. Rosa Parks's seat was in that border area. She was arrested on Wednesday, December 1, 1955, for her refusal to move. Sometimes it is reported by oral legend and by grade-level education packages that Parks was simply too tired to move from her seat after a long day of work. This is dismissible as pop-history simplicity. When found guilty later, she was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed.

Boycott

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On Thursday, December 9, 1955, Jo Ann Robinson would receive a call from Fred Gray, one of the city's two black lawyers, informing her that Rosa Parks had been arrested. That entire night Robinson worked tirelessly mimeographing over 35,000 handbills reading:

"Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown into 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... "The 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..."

The next morning at a church meeting with the new minister in the city, Martin Luther King, Jr., a citywide boycott of public transit as a protest for a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses was proposed and passed.

The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work, although it is unclear to what extent this was based on sympathy with the boycott, versus the simple desire to have their staff present and working.[1] When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.

Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used nonmotorized means to get around, such as bicycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked around. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded, but buses received extremely few, if any, passengers. Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws.

In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the White Citizens' Council, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. Like the Ku Klux Klan, the Councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King's and Ralph Abernathy's houses were firebombed, and boycotters were physically attacked.

Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protestors were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine or serve 386 days in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest.

Victory

Eventually, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional, handing the protesters a clear victory. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. Martin Luther King capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision.

The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories, and gave Martin Luther King the national attention that would make him one of the prime leaders of the cause.

On 2 December 2004, the United States Postal Service announced a pane of 10 postage stamps including the Montgomery Bus Boycott in its 2005 Commemorative Stamp Program. [2]

People

Organizations

(from Who Was Involved)

Further reading

  • My Soul Is Rested, The Story Of The Civil Rights Movement In The Deep South, by Howell Raines, ISBN 0140067531
  • Parting The Waters; America In The King Years 1954-63, by Taylor Branch, ISBN 0671460978
  • Stride Toward Freedom, by Martin Luther King Jr., ISBN 0062504908
  • The Origins Of The Civil Rights Movement, Black Communities Organizing For Change, by Aldon D. Morris, ISBN 0029221307
  • Eyes on The Prize, America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965, Juan Williams, ISBN 0140096531
  • Eyes on The Prize Civil Rights Reader, documents, speeches, and first hand accounts from the black freedom struggle, Ed. Clayborne Carson, David J. Garrow, Gerabld Gill, Vincent Harding, Darlene Clark Hine, p. 45 - 60, ISBN 0140154035

External link

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott.html"


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