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What Was The Montgomery Bus Boycott and What Took Place

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What Was The Montgomery Bus Boycott and What Took Place

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement. It signaled that a peaceful protest could result in the changing of laws to protect the equal rights of all people regardless of race.  The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation.

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On December 1, Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery,Alabama.This situation had sparked the American Civil Rights of 20th century.Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman,had been arrested and had been fined for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Montgomery to meld its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr.,a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement.

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Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the "colored section." When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks' first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama's capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders-the majority of the city's bus riders-boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery's bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester's demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city's African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents-the same price as bus fare-for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration at Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens-regardless of race-equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King's house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King's approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.

Shortly after the boycott's end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott - Facts, Significance & Rosa Parks | HISTORY

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For 382 days, almost the entire African American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses. The protests marked a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans had denied to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a protest regarding segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation.

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Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The 381-day bus boycott also brought the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., into the spotlight as one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement.

The event that triggered the boycott took place in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. Local laws dictated that African American passengers sat at the back of the bus while whites sat in front. If the white section became full, African Americans had to give up their seats in the back. When Parks refused to move to give her seat to a white rider, she was taken to jail; she was later bailed out by a local civil rights leader.

Many of Montgomery's African American residents were politically organized long before Parks was arrested. For example, the Women's Political Council (WPC) was founded in 1946, and it had been lobbying the city for improved conditions on the buses for a decade before the bus boycott began. In addition, Montgomery had an active branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where Parks also worked as a secretary.

Although Parks was not the first resident of Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger, local civil rights leaders decided to capitalize on her arrest as a chance to challenge local segregation laws. Shortly after Parks's arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, a leader of the WPC, and E.D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP, printed and distributed leaflets describing Parks's arrest and called for a one-day boycott of the city buses on December 5. They believed that the boycott could be effective because the Montgomery bus system was heavily dependent on African American riders, who made up about 75 percent of the ridership. Some 90 percent of the African American residents stayed off the buses that day.

The boycott was so successful that local civil rights leaders decided to extend it indefinitely. A group of local ministers formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to support and sustain the boycott and the legal challenge to the segregation laws. Martin Luther King, the charismatic young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected president of the MIA. A powerful orator, he was new to the area and had few enemies, and, thus, local leaders believed he could rally the various factions of the African American community to the cause.

The MIA initially asked for first-come, first-served seating, with African Americans starting in the rear and white passengers beginning in the front of the bus. They also asked that African American bus drivers be hired for routes primarily made up of African American riders. The bus companies and Montgomery officials refused to meet those demands. Many white citizens retaliated against the African American community: King's home was bombed, and many boycotters were threatened or fired from their jobs. Several times the police arrested protesters and took them to jail, once charging 80 leaders of the boycott with violating a 1921 law that barred conspiracies to interfere with lawful business without just cause.

Despite such intimidation, the boycott continued for more than a year. The MIA filed a federal suit against bus segregation, and on June 5, 1956, a federal district court declared segregated seating on buses to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in mid-November. The federal decision went into effect on December 20, 1956.

The boycott garnered a great deal of publicity in the national press, and King became well known throughout the country. The success in Montgomery inspired other African American communities in the South to protest racial discrimination and galvanized the direct nonviolent resistance phase of the civil rights movement.

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Montgomery bus boycott | Summary & Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The boycott was led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

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When Parks had refused to move and give her seat to a white rider, she was taken to jail; and later bailed out by a local civil rights leader.The Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional.The Montgomery bus boycott,was a mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery’s segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The 381-day bus boycott brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr into the spotlight as one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement.

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Finally, in November of 1956, the US Supreme court declared that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, and the boycott was brought to an end. The Montgomery bus Boycott was a very significant event in the civil rights movement which spanned the 1950's and 60's.The boycott had a huge impact on the way people saw the African American community of Montgomery. Instead of a lower class, violent, unorganized revolutionaries they saw a group of dignified, ordinary people,

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Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Describe the impact of the Montgomery bus boycott During the 1940s and 1950s there was little practical progress made in civil rights, NAACP had been concentrating on, ironically, lawful ways to fix what was wrong with the justice system, they had been focusing on court cases and representation. There had been some advances, e.g the Brown case which deemed that segregated education was indeed unconstitutional. However although the case invoked passion across America it was the Montgomery bus boycott which was a turning point for civil rights, it showed Alabama that African Americans were serious, and willing to go to great lengths for their cause. Rosa Parks was a dignified and respected women, she was friendly to neighbours and believed strongly in equality. Her attitude and reputation already gave her the moral high ground against opponents. Parks decided she did not want to give up her seat for a black man and was subsequently arrested, her arrest and trial sparked outrage across the black community and there was a call for action, for something direct to be done. ...read more.

Middle

They weren't great leaders or powerful people, they were plain and responsible citizens, this allowed others across the United States to empathise with them, with their calm manner they seemed as if they were in the right, making the Montgomery council seem stubborn, unfair and wrong. Immediately giving them the advantage. The shock value to the white community had a huge impact, many were surprised at how well the boycott had been organised and pulled off, for some it improved their view of African Americans, but as ever with extreme situations it polarised opinions and popularity of white civil councils rose, with membership increasing. However the boycott would have frightened the white community, it threatened their livelihood, most of the people who used the buses were black, and without them the bus owners could go bankrupt. It also affected downtown businesses, as they were further away from black housing African Americans were less likely to shop there. The boycott highlighted the economic power of black people, even if whites would admit it they relied on black people for their income. ...read more.

Conclusion

This highlighted the stubbornness of the white officials, and showed to the rest of the country the irony of the situation, the African Americans who had been oppressed were walking calmly to work and not responding to violence, whereas the apparently superior white people were acting pettily and some were resorting to violence. The media played a big part during the boycott, their role was to film the protesters and show their courage and commitment to the world, especially the northern states, it brought the stories into their houses and made them realise what was going on in their own country, it showed the differences between north and south. The Montgomery bus boycott also demonstrated the problem between State and federal law, they were often in contradiction and disagreed, the issue of segregation highlighted this. The Montgomery bus boycott eventually won, buses were desegregated. In comparison to the years to follow one could say bus segregation in Alabama was not a huge gain, however at the time it was a large amount of progress, it acted as a blue print for further protests and direct action, it showed a nation that the boycotters were serious, and that ordinary African Americans could do something about their situation. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level History of the USA, 1840-1968 section.

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Describe the impact of the montgomery bus boycott - A-Level History - Marked by Teachers.com

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Extracts from this document... Introduction Describe the impact of the Montgomery bus boycott During the 1940s and 1950s there was little practical progress made in civil rights, NAACP had been concentrating on, ironically, lawful ways to fix what was wrong with the justice system, they had been focusing on court cases and representation.