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 …show more content…
Finally understanding the breadth of the black’s commitment to their cause, supporters of segregation began to feel threatened by the boycotters. Because of African Americans’ long-standing status as “property” and the widely held belief that they are inferior, the white Southerner’s unyielding faith in his ability to control blacks had never before seen such a threat. A rally meant to prevent integration held by the Central Alabama Citizens Council in February 1956 introduced a handbill modeled after the Declaration of Independence and portrayed African Americans as animalistic savages that would bring about the end of civilization. The author contorts the opening words of the Declaration in an attempt to deem whites the “original” Americans with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers”. This handbill attempted to negate the raised spirits of the African Americans and return the power to the hands of white extremists by threatening to “abolish the Negro race” by use of “guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives” (Handbill). The use of threats and name-calling indicates that those threatened by the boycott had reached a place of desperation caused by the continued optimism and small successes of the boycotters. Before the boycott of Montgomery’s buses, those opposed to integration were openly confident about their supremacy and arrogant about their ability to retain their power. Though their belittlement of African Americans in this document proves their arrogance remains, it is clear that their confidence is waning. Just like the rebels, the boycott of Montgomery’s buses was changing the mindsets of whites in
The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a civil rights movement of the blacks boycotting in the bus in Montgomery during the period of civil rights. A group of blacks started the movement to protest city by city because they felt like Whites discriminates them too much. This boycott happen after a Rosa Park refused to get off the bus for Whites which she beat up and arrested; therefore, it is against segregation between Whites and Blacks. The Liberation Theology mean people use religions to make or create movement and protest to change the society. Montgomery Bus Boycott and Liberation Theology are similar because they found out that there is inequality happening in the society and people take actions to change or against situations. Also, they are
The 1955 AFRO--American newspaper article “Boycott Still On; Bus Co. Loses $3,000 Daily,” takes a liberal stance in describing the black leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Bus Company. The article states how bus drivers told black passengers, “N…. r get up out of your seat.”[viii] The n-word is a derogatory term used to refer to African Americans—particularly slaves--before and after the Civil War, and its use in the article illustrates that the bus drivers do not even think of blacks as human beings but rather property, authorizing the bus drivers to address black passengers in an uncivilized and insulting manner. Explicit racial language allows the media to point out how racial segregation between white bus drivers and black passengers remains a predominant aspect in the relationship between the two racial groups. Ironically, the AFRO newspaper claims that the Montgomery Bus company “insisted that the drivers were ‘always courteous.’”[ix] However, the ‘N…r’ proclamation from the driver directly opposes the bus company’s statement, and invalidates the company’s message. This dissonance can be explained by George Lipsitz’s article, “The which argues how systemic whiteness has created institutions that stress the incompatibility of racially
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 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.
In today’s world, social justice, otherwise known as equality and egalitarianism between the races, genders, and religions, is highly sought after. In addition to modern struggles, many movements throughout the course of history that date from even before the 1930s until just recently have been started to demand equal rights for certain ethnic groups. Coretta Scott King’s memoir, Montgomery Boycott gives the reader an inside view of Martin Luther King’s personal life during the Montgomery City Bus Line boycott for impartiality in public transportation after Rosa Parks’ famous arrest. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, she discusses how the Southern population in the 1930s allowed racism and the Jim Crow Laws to become socially
For 75 years following reconstruction the United States made little advancement towards racial equality. Many parts of the nation enacted Jim Crowe laws making separation of the races not just a matter of practice but a matter of law. The laws were implemented with the explicit purpose of keeping black American’s from being able to enjoy the rights and freedoms their white counterparts took for granted. Despite the efforts of so many nameless forgotten heroes, the fate of African Americans seemed to be in the hands of a racist society bent on keeping them down; however that all began to change following World War II. Thousands of African American men returned from Europe with a renewed purpose and determined to break the proverbial chains segregation had keep them in since the end of the American Civil War. With a piece of Civil Rights legislation in 1957, the federal government took its first step towards breaking the bonds that had held too many citizens down for far too long. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was a watered down version of the law initially proposed but what has been perceived as a small step towards correcting the mistakes of the past was actually a giant leap forward for a nation still stuck in the muck of racial division. What some historians have dismissed as an insignificant and weak act was perhaps the most important law passed during the nation’s civil rights movement, because it was the first and that cannot be underestimated.
Historians offer different perceptions of the significance of Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington. Without examining this event within its historical context the media publicity and iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech can easily overshadow progress that was already underway in America. It was insisted by prominent civil rights activist Ella Baker, ‘the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement.’ What is important not to overlook is the significant change that took place in the United States during the previous 100 years. Such that, many influential figures in support of racial equality opposed the March. The Civil Rights Act proposed by President Kennedy in 1963 was already in the legislative process. Furthermore the Federal Government was now reasserting power over the entire of the United States by enforcing a policy of desegregation. It is important to note that these changes all took place less than one hundred years after the Thirteenth Amendment in 1965 abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth amendment in 1968 acknowledged the rights of former slaves to be acknowledged as U.S citizens. With this level of progress Kennedy was against the March going ahead due to the argument that it was limited in what it could achieve. Today, King’s 1963 Speech is viewed as one of the most iconic speeches in history. However, was it a key turning point in African Americans achieving racial equality? Federal endorsement would suggest yes after decades of southern states being able to subvert the Federal law designed to break down segregation. This support built upon the corner stones of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in the nineteenth century. Therefore looking at the national status of black Americans fro...
The reason the bus boycott succeed was because over half the bus riders were colored and when they stopped riding the bus the lost over half their money so they had to shut the busses down. Everything that everyone had been fighting for had finally happen, dreams finally came true, people were now equal no matter what color skin color they
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...
Blair Kelley tells the story of several turn-of-the-century desegregation campaigns. Many readers will be aware that black Americans mounted successful boycott campaigns to desegregate urban transit systems, particularly from August Meier and Elliot Rudwick?s 1969 article.? Kelley looks at several of these, and takes issue with Meier and Rudwick?s depiction of them as essentially conservative and middle-class, in contrast to the more radical and mass-based Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. His story shows the complex problems that arose in black communities divided along lines of class, ideology, and complexion.
Since Rosa Parks was arrested, 42,000 African Americans boycotted the buses in Montgomery. This boycott induced the economic crippling of the city bus system. Police brutality emerged from the by harassing, intimidating, and arresting the leadership of the movement (Kates, "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard
Recently you have received a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In Dr. King’s letter he illustrates the motives and reasoning for the extremist action of the Civil Rights movement throughout the 1960’s. In the course of Dr. King’s letter to you, he uses rhetorical questioning and logistical reasoning, imagery and metaphors, and many other rhetorical devices to broaden your perspectives. I am writing this analysis in hopes you might reconsider the current stance you have taken up regarding the issues at hand.
...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.”
However, by the end of the 20th Century, women, blacks, and other minorities could be found in the highest echelons of American Society. From the corporate offices of IBM, to the U.S. Supreme Court bench, an obvious ideological revolution bringing integration and acceptance of a variety of human beings had taken place, but only at the expense of great amounts of sweat and blood.... ... middle of paper ... ... 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 its busses.
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.