Montgomery Bus Boycott
Segregation is the act or practice of keeping people
or groups apart. Montgomery's segregation laws were complex: blacks were required
to pay their bus fare to the driver, then get off the bus and re-board through
the back door. Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers
made it to the back entrance. If the white section was full and another white
customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther
to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from
whites. These humiliations were made worse by the fact that two-thirds of
the bus riders in Montgomery were black.
Mrs. Parks was not the first to be arrested for refusing
to give her seat to a white person. Earlier that year, Claudette Colvin, 15,
refused to give up her seat and was arrested and in October, Mary Louise Smith
was arrested. Black activists and the NAACP met with both of these people, but
decided they needed someone able to withstand the scrutiny of the media, someone
upstanding and a solid member of the community.
When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955,
the leaders in Montgomery 's black community saw the incident as an opportunity
for protesting the city's segregation laws. Mrs. Parks was the perfect person
for the NAACP to challenge the segregation laws since she was married and employed
in the community. Over the weekend of December 3 and 4, the Reverends Ralph
Abernathy and Martin Luther King met with Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's
Political Council, and E. D. Nixon, an official with the NAACP. The purpose
of their meeting was to plan a boycott against the Montgomery city bus lines.
Forty thousand fliers were printed and passed out among the members of the black
community. Also, on December 4th, Black ministers throughout the city repeated
the message from their pulpits. The boycott began on Monday, December 5, the
day of Mrs. Parks' trial, and it was an immediate success. According to the
bus company receipts, about 90 percent of the blacks who usually rode the buses
joined the boycott and found other means of transportation, such as carpooling,
hitch-hiking, riding bicycles, and even riding mules. Later in the evening,
the black leaders of the community held another meeting and formed the M.I.A
(Montgomery Improvement Association). The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was
elected as president of this organization because he was new to the community
and so he didn't have any enemies. The MIA developed a detailed system of transporting
people to replace city buses during the boycott.
The Montgomery bus boycott continued until December
21, 1956. During that time, some people from the local white communities fought
back against the protesters. Blacks riding in carpools were harassed by the
police. Bombs were set off at the houses of Reverend King and Mr. Nixon. At
one point, King was arrested on a minor speeding offense for driving 30 mph
in a 25 mph zone. Later, conspiracy charges based on state anti-boycott law
were brought against King and other leaders of the MIA. 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 boycott was a victory for the black community
and a model across the world. Montgomery was a strictly segregated city in one
of the most segregated states of the deep south. If they could rebel against
segregation in Alabama, they could do it anywhere.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a significant event in the civil rights movement
of the 1950's and 1960's because it achieved solidarity among African Americans
and caught the attention of the entire nation. People around the country were
made aware of the event because it was a big boycott that lasted for more than
a year. It gave Martin Luther King a position of leadership within the national
movement and showed that the nonviolent method of protest was effective.
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