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Essay of Montgomery bus boycotting during 1950 to 1970s
Essay of Montgomery bus boycotting during 1950 to 1970s
Essay of Montgomery bus boycotting during 1950 to 1970s
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The Civil Rights Movement of 1955
Prior to 1955, African-Americas in the south as well as the north had been denied the rights of fellow white Americans. Rights that had been granted to them under the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution a law which white people wrote and were supposed to uphold. In the mid-1900’s, African-Americans began to challenge their stance in American society, no longer would they be viewed as second-rate citizens. This was due to the revival of the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement, which began with the courageous actions of one woman in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year old seamstress refused to yield her seat on a bus to a white man. She was arrested on the spot and fined fourteen dollars. Her bold courage issued forth a domino effect of non-violent protests that would break down the iron gate of segregation. As we read her story and the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott first hand from the articles published in the New York Times, we saw that her actions and the boycott that ensued was the most significant event of 1955. We will discuss the differences in the news reports that we gathered on the event and the various articles that have been written within the past ten years, after the end of the Civil Rights Movement. One will see, as we did, that there is a distinct difference in viewpoints of the authors of these respective pieces.
As stated earlier, The Montgomery Bus Boycott started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. This type of event rarely happened in the south, which thought of African-Americans as lesser human beings. Montgomery’s black community soon issued thei...
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...at if Baldwin were to hear this case in court, he’d find us guilty as charged.
Works Cited
“Buses Boycotted over Race Issue” Dec. 5th, 1955
Phillips, Wayne. Negro Pastors Press Bus Boycott By Preaching Passive Resistance, New York Times, March 22, 1955.
Barrett, George. Bus Integration In Alabama Calm, New York Times, December 21, 1955.
Negro Leaders Arrested In Alabama Bus Boycott. No author
Buses Boycotted Over Race Issue. No author
Negroes Boycott Cripples Bus Line., New York Times, January 7, 1955.
Religious Revivalism in the Civil Rights Movement. No author
Burns, Stewart, ed. Daybreak of Freedom: “The Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Chapel Hill: The University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Leventhal, Willy S., et al., eds. “The Children Coming On . . . A Retrospective of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Montgomery: Black Belt Press, 1998.
Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that aimed for the desegregation of the bus systems in Montgomery, Alabama.[i] The organization revolved around the emerging civil rights leader and pastor Martin Luther King Jr. Three years later, King’s method of non-violent protests would inspire four students to begin the Greensboro sit-ins in North Carolina, which is regarded as one of the most significant demonstrations at the time.[ii] Many of the discriminatory practices during this time period stems from whiteness, which is a belief about entitlement and ownership for whites based solely on their skin color. The media utilizes rhetorical devices, such as analogy, polarizing
On the date May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, had taken a seat down in the whites only section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee, Florida. When these women refused to move to the colored section at the very back of the bus, the driver had decided to pull over into a service station and call the police on them. Tallahassee police arrested them and charged them with the accusation of them placing themselves in a position to incite a riot. In the days after that immediately followed these arrests, students at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University organized a huge campus-wide boycott of all of the city buses. Their inspiring stand against segregation set an example and an intriguing idea that had spread to tons of Tallahassee citizens who were thinking the same things and brought a change of these segregating ways into action. Soon, news of the this boycott spread throughout the whole entire community rapidly. Reverend C.K. Steele composed the formation of an organization known as the Inter-Civic Council (ICC) to manage the logic and other events happening behind the boycott. C.K. Steele and the other leaders created the ICC because of the unfounded negative publicity surrounding the National Associat...
In 1955, African Americans were required by a Montgomery, Alabama city ordinance to sit in the back of all city buses. They had to give up their seats to white American riders if the front of the bus, which was reserved for whites, was full. On December 1, 1955, a few days before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man on the Montgomery bus. When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Rosa Parks and three other African Americans to vacate their seats.
On December 5, 1955, thousands of African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama walked, carpooled, or hitchhiked to work in an act of rebellion against segregation on buses. This bus boycott was not the first of its kind – black citizens of Baton-Rouge, Louisiana had implemented the same two years prior – but the bus boycott in Montgomery was a critical battle of the Civil Rights Movement. Though the original intent of the boycott was to economically cripple the bus system until local politicians agreed to integrate the city’s buses, the Montgomery Bus Boycott impacted the fabric of society in a much deeper way. Instead of only changing the symptoms of a much larger problem, this yearlong protest was the first step in transforming the way all Americans
The United States in the 1950s was quite different from the modern world we live in. There was a time where it was against the law for an African American to ride in the front of a bus or to be in the same school as a white child. Thankfully today our world is more accepting than that and we have the Civil Rights movement to thank for that. The Civil Rights Movement and its participants are responsible for shaping the country we now see today.
Newsweek 5 Dec 1955. 5 “Alabama’s Boycott: What It’s All About.” US News and World Report 3 Aug 1956: 84-88. “Buses Boycotted over Race Issue” New York Times 6 Dec 1955: 31.
Kennedy, Randall. “Martin Luther King’s Constitution: A Legal History of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Yale Law Journal 98 (1989 1988): 999.
Rosa Parks was a member of the NAACP, lived in Montgomery Alabama, and rode the public bus system. In the south, during this time the buses were segregated which meant that black people had to ride in the back of the bus behind a painted line. White people entered the front of the bus and were compelled to sit in front of the painted line. Most buses at the time had more room for white riders who used the service less than the black ridership. Yet, they could not cross the line even if the seats in the front were empty (Brown-Rose, 2008). Rosa Parks made a bold statement when she sat in the “white section” of a Montgomery bus. She was asked to surrender her seat to a white man, but she did not move and was soon arrested. Her brave action started the Montgomery bus Boycott, with the help of the NAACP, none other than Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership as part of the Montgomery Improvement Association. As its President, he was able spread the word quickly which brought national attention to the small town of Montgomery’s bus Boycott. The boycott was televised and brought so much attention that the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional; a success spurring a more
Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
Despite the great efforts put forth during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 in which the black community and its supporters refused to use public transportation, transport segregation still remained in some southern states. As a result the civil rights group, the Congress on Racial Inequality (C.O.R.E.), began to organize what they called “freedom rides.” In 1961, the group began sending student volunteers on bus trips to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in interstate travel facilities (Peck, 161). Most notable was a trip they took from Washington, D.C., making stops in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Upon arrival the group was met with violence and brutality from the Ku Klux Klan and others, but this did not deter them from getting their voice heard. In September 1961, the Attorney General petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to draft a policy making racial segregation in bus terminals illegal, and in November this was put into effect. The Freedom Riders gave national publicity to the discrimination that black Americans were forced to endure and, in doing so, helped bring about change not only in bus terminals but in the nation as a whole.
(3) Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955): After the supreme court decided to end segregation, African Americans started to speak out more about their racial opinions. In Montgomery, Alabama, a bus boycott ended with a victory for the African Americans. The Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama segregation laws were unconstitutional. During the boycott a young African American Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. became well known. Throughout the long contest he advised African Americans to avoid violence no matter had badly provoked by whites. Rosa Parks tired of sitting in the back of the bus, and giving up her seat to white men. One weary day she refused to move from the front of the bus, and she became one of history's heroes in the Civil Rights Act movement.
The Web. 23 May 2014. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_montgomery_bus_boycott_1955_1956/>. Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery, an Autobiography.
...ivil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown vs. Board of Educa2tion of Topeka decision of 1954.” The Montgomery bus boycott happened on “December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks... who refused to give up her sear to a white passenger on a bus” she was arrested. Later, the Supreme Court ruled “segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956.”
Blacks walked miles to work, organized carpools, and despite efforts from the police to discourage this new spark of independence, the boycotts continued for more than a year until in November 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery bus company must desegregate it's busses. Were it not for the leadership of Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson, and the support the black community through church congregations, these events may have not happened for many years to come.
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson, and David J. Garrow. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: the Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1987. Print.