In the late eighteen hundreds, the Reconstruction by Congress was overturned by the Supreme Court. Segregation or separation by skin color was made a law which was adopted by private organizations, institutions and businesses (loc.gov). Physical violence and mental harassment was imposed upon those whom were deemed inferior in color. Some citizens accepted the law, as is, without question while others believed it was their supreme right to remain separate without modification. Human activists, that opposed this way of living, pursued an extensive battle to abolish racial inequity and segregation from American life (loc.gov). During the nineteen hundreds, many understood this treatment as an offense to human beings and activists began receiving assistance toward this common goal. Support and hindrance, for equality, were both on the rise throughout the Montgomery Bus Boycott. There were also citizens and organizations or groups who neither supported nor opposed segregation. They just wanted some sort of compromise or settlement to put a stop to all the chaos happening in their city.
Two groups in particular that attempted to acquire an agreement between Montgomery city officials, the transportation company and protest leaders were the Men of Montgomery and the Alabama Council on Human Relations. The Men of Montgomery, a businessmen’s group, recruited by protest leaders to resolve the issues was unsuccessful in obtaining a consensus to meet the demands of the bus boycott. These men were able to construct a meeting with the opposing sides; however, they did not take a stand for complete humanity. Choosing sides would possibly gain repercussions from either side. City officials were only willing to produce a partial agreement that...
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...unity joined together which was not normal among them. Civility was the conquest among boycotters. Montgomery wasn’t ready for the change. They were forced, by the Supreme Court, to accept the terms of the protesters. The long process and struggle finally paid off, integration legally was adopted.
WORKS CITED
Garrow, David J. “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference.” Bearing the Cross. William Morrow. New York Quill. 1-82.
Interview, “Montgomery Bus Boycott,” Mrs. Janice Chapital, 09 Apr 2014.
Library of Congress Exhibitions. 06 Oct 09. A Century of Racial Segregation,
1849-1850. 22 Feb 2014.
Olson, Lynne. “The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830
To 1970.” Freedom’s Daughters. Murrow. New York. Scribner. 13-17, 87-191.
Blacks were treated unjustly due to the Jim Crow laws and the racial stigmas embedded into American society. Under these laws, whites and colored people were “separate but equal,” however this could not be further from the truth. Due to the extreme racism in the United States during this time period, especially in the South, many blacks were dehumanized by whites to ensure that they remained inferior to them. As a result of their suffering from the prejudice society of America, there was a national outcry to better the lives of colored people.
In the book, Colaiaco presents the successes that Dr. King achieves throughout his work for Civil Rights. The beginning of Dr. King’s nonviolent civil rights movements started in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks refused to move for a white person, violating city’s transportation rules. After Parks was convicted Dr. King, who was 26 at the time, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). “For 381 days, thousands of blacks walked to work, some as many as 12 miles a day, rather than continue to submit to segregated public transportation” (18). This boycott ended up costing the bus company more than $250,000 in revenue. The bus boycott in Montgomery made King a symbol of racial justice overnight. This boycott helped organize others in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tallahassee. During the 1940s and 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) won a series of cases that helped put it ahead in the civil rights movement. One of these advancements was achieved in 1944, when the United States Supreme Court banned all-white primaries. Other achievements made were the banning of interstate bus seating segregating, the outlawing of racially restraining covenants in housing, and publicly supporting the advancement of black’s education Even though these advancements meant quite a lot to the African Americans of this time, the NAACP’s greatest accomplishment came in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which overturned the Plessy vs.
The black people of Montgomery decided that the best way to show their anger at what had happened and how they were being treated would be by boycott, not use, the local bus service. One the first day of the boycott the buses were almost empty. The black community worked together and arranged another forms of transport such as car pool, or waling. Black taxi companies only charged back passengers the price of the bus fair and some white people who could do without their servants even when to pick them up form their homes. During the boycott the bus company lost 65% of their earnings. This showed people who powerful non-violent protest could be, by challenging black segregation laws without committing a crime. It also showed the black people how powerful they could be if they worked together.
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...
This source shows us what life was like for the black community, specifically black women, in the southern states of America. The source is a picture of a leaflet distributed in 1955 by the ?Women?s political council,? an anti-segregation group, calling for a boycott on the buses in Montgomery, Alabama. The involvement of women in politics only angered the white segregationists further. The boycott, which was originally intended to last only a single day, lasted for a total 381 days and it only ended when the American Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses was unconstitutional. This would have had a rather large impact on the business economy within Montgomery and possibly even Alabama. Montgomery subsequently changed its laws so that buses were integrated. Even though the supreme court ruled that segregation on the buses was unconstitutional it did not overturn all of the segregation laws.
Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 was actually a collective response to decades of intimidation, harassment and discrimination of Alabama's African American population. By 1955, judicial decisions were still the principal means of struggle for civil rights, even though picketing, marches and boycotts sometimes punctuated the litigation. The boycott, which lasted for more than a year, was almost 100 percent effective.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott brought international attention and put light on the segregation of blacks in the United States of America. Because of all the attention they received, the Supreme Court was focused on the situation of segregated buses.They created a federal ruling named Browder v. Gayle realizing that any law that segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868.(“Montgomery Bus Boycott,” History.com). Because of this, on November 13th, 1956, the Supreme Court ordered the state of Alabama to completely desegregate their buses,(“Montgomery Bus Boycott,” American History). On December 20th, 1956, the Montgomery buses were finally desegregated,(“Montgomery Bus Boycott,” American History). Integration of the Montgomery buses leads to violence. Many people started to shoot the buses with snipers. Bell Street Baptist Church, Hutchinson Street Baptist Church, Abernathy's First Baptist Church, and Mount Olive Baptist Church were bombed by 7 members of the Ku Klux Klan, (“Montgomery Bus
“Alabama’s Boycott: What its all about.” US News and World Report 3 Aug 1956: 84-88
In Martin Luther King Jr’s book, Stride Towards Freedom, he sums up the whole boycott very nicely. “The Story of Montgomery us the story of 50,00 Negroes who were willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls and walk the streets of Montgomery until the walls of segregation were finally battered by the forces of justice.”5
Thousands of Americans gathered and marched peacefully in August 28, 1963 to Washington which was the greatest assemblage for human rights in the history of the United States. They marched for justice, equality and peace. According to the article, “The 1963 March on Washington” Yussuf Simmonds describes, “…An unprecedented gathering of blacks and Whites exposing society 's ills and demanding that the government enforce the laws equally to protect all its citizens regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, ethnicity or any other superficial differences that had been place by human beings on other human beings” (1). Dr. King delivered his historic speech “I Have a Dream” which is one of the most influential speeches against racial segregation
... black people, but laws say everyone is to be treated equal. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a main point in the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Boycott changed the way people are today. The before and after life of African Americans and even whites, is a huge difference.
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.
Enraged with the death of Jim, around 650 protestors gathered again on March 7 and attempted a march through Selma to Montgomery, ignoring Governor Wallace’s orders not to march. They again met with state troopers and a crueler response. A wall of state troopers was formed at US Highway 80 to stop the march. After refusing the orders from the police to stop the march, the troopers took action. The prot...
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.