The Civil Rights Movement: The Montgomery Bus Boycott

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The Civil Rights Movement started with The Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks was an Educated women and she attended the laboratory school at Alabama State College. Even with that kind of education she decided to become a seamstress because of the fact that she could not find a job to suit her skills.

Rosa Parks was arrested December 1955. Rosa Parks Entered a bus with three other blacks and sat on the fifth row. The fifth row was the first row the black could occupy. After a few stops later the rows in front of them where filled with whites. According to the law at the time blacks and whites could not occupy the same row. There had been one white man left with out a seat. The bus driver …show more content…

Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased some school supplies, then went to the lunch counter and asked to be served. One of the students said "We believe, since we buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we should get served in this part." They sat there until the store had closed and still they had been denied service. This first sit-in had very little effect.

Soon words began to spread. Gordon Carey, a representative from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), came down from New York to organize more sit-ins. In a few weeks several cities began sit-ins mainly in Woolworth's and S.H. Kress stores. The basic concept of sit-ins students would go up to the counter and ask to be served and if they would where served them they would move on. If they where not served they would wait till they are served. If they happen to be arrested a new group would come to replace them.

They had standards also. Like don?t talk back or strike back if attack, always face the counter, and to be on there best behavior. They had to wear there best Sunday cloths they had. Also not to hold conversations or to block entrances. When Northern students heard of the movement, they decided to help their Southern counterparts by picketing local branches of chain stores that were segregated in the …show more content…

50 more came the next day. Only seven got in to take the test over the two days. Once they got in, they had to take a test designed to prevent them from becoming registered. In 1954, in response to increasing literacy among blacks, a part of the test was changed from read or interprets a section of the state constitution to read and interpret that document. This allowed white registrars to decide whether or not a person passed the test. Most blacks, even those with doctoral degrees, failed.
The NAACP went to Mississippi in an effort to register more blacks in the late 1950s. SNCC organized a voter registration education program, teaching a weekly class that showed people how to register. SNCC worker Marion Barry arrived on August 18 and started workshops to teach young blacks nonviolent protest methods. Many of the blacks, too young to vote, jumped at the opportunity to join the movement. They began holding sit-ins. Some were arrested and expelled from

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