Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. The ensuing struggle lasted from December 5, 1955, to December 21, 1956, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was a black seamstress by profession and secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. Shortly before her arrest on Thursday, December 1st, 1955, she had completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. The boycott was triggered by her arrest on Thursday, December 1, 1955 when she was charged for violating racial segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. The full story says that she was sitting in the fifth row (the first row that blacks could occupy), along with three other blacks. Soon, all of the first four rows were filled up, and a white man walked on. Since blacks and whites couldn't be in the same row, the man wanted all of the blacks to move. The other three blacks complied, but Parks refused.
Technically Parks was not asked to give up her seat for a white man. She was sitting in the colored section of the bus, but the white section was full, and a white man was standing. The bus driver demanded that the first row of colored seating be vacated, in effect making it a white row. Three black people vacated their seats; Parks refused. When found guilty the following Monday, December 5, 1955, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed, triggering litigation that would result in the U. S. Supreme Court striking down Montgomery's segregation on buses as unconstitutional. As a result of her courage, Rosa Parks is considered one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement.
E. D. Nixon, Architect of the Boycott
The boycott was planned before Rosa Parks' arrest by 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, 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." Enter Rosa Parks, who was arrested on Thursday, December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger.
Between Parks' arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at the church of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting due to 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")), create a list of demands to propose to the city, and select Rev. 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 clergymen's reluctance to support the campaign. Nixon was indignant, pointing out that their poor congregants worked to put money into the collection plates so these ministers could live well, and when those congregants 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 Rev. King spoke up, denying he was afraid to support the boycott. King agreed to lead the MIA, and Nixon was elected its treasurer.
Execution of the 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 Negro 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."[1]
The next morning at a church meeting led by the new MIA head, Rev. 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 the leaders of the boycott believed the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept rather than a demand for 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 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 in Montgomery as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only days before Parks' arrest. This demand was to be supplemented by a requirement that all bus passengers receive courteous treatment by bus operators, be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, and blacks be employed as bus drivers. The proposal was passed, and the boycott was to commence the following Monday. To publicize the impending boycott it was advertised at black churches throughout Montgomery the following Sunday.
On Monday, December 5, 1955, it was evident that black community would support the boycott, as very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." 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.[2] 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 on December 8, 1955, 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 non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also raised their thumbs to hitchhike around. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received extremely few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities[2]. 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, as were four black Baptist churches. Boycotters were often physically attacked.
Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. However, King commented on the arrest by saying: "I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice." [3]
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 (Browder v. Gayle). However, an appeal kept the segregation intact and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower 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 382 days. 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.
People
- Reverend Ralph Abernathy
- James Blake
- Aurelia Browder
- Claudette Colvin
- Clifford Durr
- Georgia Gilmore
- Fred Gray
- Grover Hall Jr.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Rosa Parks
- Coretta Scott King
- Susie McDonald
- E.D. Nixon
- Mother Pollard
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Mary Fair Burks
- Bayard Rustin
- Glen Smiley
- Mary Louise Smith
- Hugo Black
Organizations
(from Who Was Involved)
- Women's Political Council
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- Fellowship of Reconciliation
- Congress of Racial Equality
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- Committee for Nonviolent Integration
- Men of Montgomery
References
Further reading
- Taylor Branch, Parting The Waters: America In The King Years, 1954-63 (1988; New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1989). ISBN 0-671-68742-5
- Clayborne Carson et al., editors, Eyes on The Prize Civil Rights Reader: documents, speeches, and first hand accounts from the black freedom struggle (New York:Penguin Books, 1991). ISBN 0-14-015403-5
- David J. Garrow, editor, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1987). ISBN 0-87049-527-5
- Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom. ISBN 0-06-250490-8
- Aldon D. Morris, The Origins Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing For Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984). ISBN 0-02-922130-7
- Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: The Story Of The Civil Rights Movement In The Deep South. ISBN 0-14-006753-1
- Juan Williams, Eyes on The Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988). ISBN 0-14-009653-1
- Walsh Frank, Landmark Events in American History: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.