The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social
protestA boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
campaign that started in 1955 in
Montgomery, AlabamaMontgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of
racial segregationRacial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
,
Ralph AbernathyRalph David Abernathy, Sr. was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and...
, and others, as listed below. The boycott caused crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the principal boycotters were also the bulk of the system's paying customers. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when
Rosa ParksRosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling,
Browder v. GayleBrowder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 , was a case heard before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on Montgomery bus segregation laws...
, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
Events leading up to boycott
In 1944, athletic star
Jackie RobinsonJack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
took a similar stand in a confrontation with a
United States ArmyThe United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
officer in Fort Hood,
TexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, refusing to move to the back of a bus. Robinson was brought before a
court-martialA court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
, which acquitted him.
The NAACP had accepted and litigated other cases before, such as that of Irene Morgan ten years earlier, which resulted in a victory in the
U.S. Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
on
Commerce ClauseThe Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...
grounds. That victory, however, overturned state segregation laws only insofar as they applied to travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel, and Southern bus companies immediately circumvented the Morgan ruling by instituting their own
Jim CrowThe Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
regulations. In November, 1955, just three weeks before Parks' defiance of Jim Crow laws in Montgomery, the
Interstate Commerce CommissionThe Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
, in response to a complaint filed by WAC Sarah Keys, closed the legal loophole left by the Morgan ruling in a landmark case known as
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach CompanySarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 MCC 769 is a landmark civil rights case in the United States in which the Interstate Commerce Commission, in response to a bus segregation complaint filed in 1953 by a Women's Army Corps private named Sarah Louise Keys, broke with its historic adherence to...
. The ICC prohibited individual carriers from imposing their own segregation rules on interstate travelers, declaring that to do so was a violation of the anti-discrimination provision of the Interstate Commerce Act. But neither the Supreme Court's Morgan ruling nor the ICC's Keys ruling addressed the matter of Jim Crow travel within the individual states.
Black activists had begun to build a case to challenge state bus segregation laws around the arrest of a 15-year-old girl,
Claudette ColvinClaudette Colvin is a pioneer of the African-American civil rights movement. She was the first person to resist bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months. The court case stemming from her refusal to give up her seat on the bus, decided by...
, a student at
Booker T. WashingtonBooker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
High School in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She claimed that her constitutional rights were being violated. At the time, Colvin was active in the
NAACP Youth CouncilThe NAACP Youth Council is a branch of the NAACP in which youth are actively involved. In past years, council participants organized under the council's name to make major strides in the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement...
, a group to which Parks served as Advisor.
Method of segregation on Montgomery buses
Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back. On some occasions bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard.
National City LinesNational City Lines, Inc. , was a controversial company founded in Minnesota, United States in 1920 as a modest local transport company operating two buses which was reorganized into a holding company in 1936 with equity funding from General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and...
owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Rosa Parks
Rosa ParksRosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
was born on February 4, 1913, in
Tuskegee, AlabamaTuskegee is a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 11,846 and is designated a Micropolitan Statistical Area. Tuskegee has been an important site in various stages of African American history....
. She was a
seamstressSewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era...
by profession and secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the
NAACPThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945 she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama to investigate the gang rape of
Recy TaylorRecy Taylor is an African American woman from Abbeville, Alabama in Henry County, Alabama. Taylor is a wife and a mother. She was kidnapped while leaving church and brutally gang raped by six white men on September 3, 1944. Her rape and subsequent court cases were among the first instances of...
. The Taylor case is the first instance of a nation wide civil rights protest, and the uniting forces of the Taylor case laid the groundwork for the bus boycott ten years in the future. Shortly before being arrested on December 1, 1955, she had completed a course in "Race Relations" at the
Highlander Folk SchoolThe Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center located in New Market, Tennessee. Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski,...
in Tennessee where non-violent civil-disobedience had been discussed as a tactic.
Before Parks was arrested in 1955, she had a small episode on a bus in 1943. Parks was ordered to enter at the back of the bus. As she was heading to the back of the bus, the bus driver drove off without her. On that day, Parks promised herself that she would never again ride a bus driven by
James F. BlakeJames F. Blake was the bus driver whom Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Blake served in the Army in the European theatre during World War II. He worked as a bus driver for Montgomery City Bus Lines until 1974.One day in 1943, Parks boarded the bus and paid the fare...
, the offending driver. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the front-most row for black people. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back to create a new row for the whites. At that moment, Parks suddenly realized in horror that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Found guilty on December 5, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4', but she appealed. NAACP leader E.D. Nixon had been planning to start a boycott of this nature and used her arrest to trigger the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As a result, Rosa Parks is considered one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement.
E.D. Nixon
Some action against segregation had been in the works for some time before Rosa Parks' arrest, under the leadership of
E.D. NixonEdgar Daniel Nixon was an African American civil rights leader and union organizer who played a crucial role in organizing the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Nixon also led the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, known as the Pullman Porters...
, president of the local
NAACPThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
chapter and a member of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car PortersThe Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was, in 1925, the first labor organization led by blacks to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor . It merged in 1978 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks , now known as the Transportation Communications International Union.The...
. Nixon intended that her arrest be a test case to allow Montgomery's black citizens to challenge segregation on the city's public buses. With this goal, community leaders had been waiting for the right person to be arrested, a person who would anger the black community into action, who would agree to test the segregation laws in court, and who, most importantly, was "above reproach." When 15-year-old
Claudette ColvinClaudette Colvin is a pioneer of the African-American civil rights movement. She was the first person to resist bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months. The court case stemming from her refusal to give up her seat on the bus, decided by...
was arrested early in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, E.D. Nixon thought he had found the perfect person, but the teenager turned out to be pregnant. Nixon later explained, "I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with." Parks, however, was a good candidate because of her employment and marital status, along with her good standing in the community.
Between Parks' arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work schedule, he arranged that no election of a leader for the proposed boycott would take place until his return. When he returned he caucused with
Ralph AbernathyRalph David Abernathy, Sr. was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and...
and Rev. E.N. French to name the association to lead the boycott (they selected the '
Montgomery Improvement AssociationThe Montgomery Improvement Association was formed on December 5, 1955 by black ministers and community leaders in Montgomery, Alabama. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr...
' ("MIA")) to the city, and select King (Nixon's choice) to lead the boycott. Nixon wanted King to lead the boycott because the young minister was new to Montgomery and the city fathers had not had time to intimidate him. At a subsequent, larger meeting of ministers, Nixon's agenda was threatened by the clergymen's reluctance to support the campaign. Nixon was indignant, pointing out that their poor congregations worked to put money into the collection plates so these ministers could live well, and when those congregations needed the clergy to stand up for them, those comfortable ministers refused to do so. Nixon threatened to reveal the ministers' cowardice to the black community, and King spoke up, denying he was afraid to support the boycott. King agreed to lead the MIA, and Nixon was elected its treasurer.
Boycott
On the night of Rosa Parks' arrest,
Jo Ann RobinsonJo Ann Gibson Robinson was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama. Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a...
, head of the
Women's Political CouncilThe Women's Political Council, founded in Montgomery, Alabama, was an organization that was part of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.. Members included Mary Fair Burks, Jo Ann Robinson, Irene West, and Uretta Adair...
, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows:
"Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday."
The next morning at a church meeting led by the new MIA head, King, a citywide boycott of public transit was proposed to demand a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses. Such a line would have meant that if the white section of the bus was oversubscribed, whites would have to stand; blacks would not be forced to remit their seats to whites.
This demand was a compromise for the leaders of the boycott who believed that the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept it rather than a demand for a full integration of the buses. In this respect, the MIA leadership followed the pattern of earlier boycott campaigns in the
Deep SouthThe Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
during the 1950s. A prime example was the successful boycott a few years earlier of service stations in
MississippiMississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
for refusing to provide restrooms for blacks. The organizer of that campaign,
T. R. M. HowardTheodore Roosevelt Mason Howard was an American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, entrepreneur and surgeon...
of the
Regional Council of Negro LeadershipThe Regional Council of Negro Leadership was a society in Mississippi founded by T. R. M. Howard in 1951 to promote a program of civil rights, self-help, and business ownership...
, had spoken on the brutal slaying of
Emmett TillEmmett Louis "Bobo" Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married...
as King's guest at the
Dexter Avenue Baptist ChurchDexter Avenue Baptist Church is a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. The church was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1974. In 1978 the official name was changed to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped to organize the...
only four days before Parks's arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.
The MIA's demand for a fixed dividing line was to be supplemented by a requirement that all bus passengers receive courteous treatment by bus operators, be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, and blacks be employed as bus drivers. The proposal was passed, and the boycott was to commence the following Monday. To publicize the impending boycott it was advertised at black churches throughout Montgomery the following Sunday.
On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work. It cannot be determined to what extent this was based on sympathy with the boycott, or simply the desire to have their employees present and working. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with
Lloyd's of LondonLloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
.
Black
taxiA taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials on December 8, 1955, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received extremely few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities. Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws.
In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the
White Citizens' CouncilThe White Citizens' Council was an American white supremacist organization formed on July 11, 1954. After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America...
, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. The councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King's and Ralph Abernathy's houses were
firebombedFirebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs....
, as were four black Baptist churches. Boycotters were often physically attacked.
Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. King commented on the arrest by saying: "I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice."
Also important during the bus boycott were the grass-roots activist groups which helped to catalyze both fund-raising and morale. Groups such as the
Club from NowhereGeorgia Teresa Gilmore was an African American woman from Montgomery, Alabama who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott through her fund-raising effort selling food at the boycott’s mass meetings...
helped to sustain the boycott by finding new ways of raising money and offering support to boycott participants. Many members of these organizations were women and their contributions to the effort have been described by some as essential to the success of the bus boycott.
Victory
Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956, the
federal district court ruledBrowder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 , was a case heard before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on Montgomery bus segregation laws...
that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted, and the boycott officially ended December 20, 1956. The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. Martin Luther King, Jr. capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had ramifications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses and provided more than just a positive answer to the Supreme Court's action against racial segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott reverberated throughout the United States and stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement.
The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories and gave Martin Luther King, Jr. the national attention that made him one of the prime leaders of the cause.
People
- Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and...
- Hugo Black
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American politician and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, Black represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1927 to 1937, and served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. Black was nominated to the Supreme...
- James F. Blake
James F. Blake was the bus driver whom Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Blake served in the Army in the European theatre during World War II. He worked as a bus driver for Montgomery City Bus Lines until 1974.One day in 1943, Parks boarded the bus and paid the fare...
- Aurelia Browder
Aurelia Shines Browder Coleman was an African American civil rights activist. In April 1955, months before the historic arrest of Rosa Parks, she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider. She was the lead plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle action lawsuit...
- Thomas Dean Brown
- Mary Fair Burks
Mary Fair Burks was an American educator, scholar, and civil rights activist from Montgomery, Alabama. She was head of the English department at Alabama State College in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
- Johnnie Carr
Johnnie Rebecca Daniels Carr was a leader in the Civil Rights movement in the United States from 1955 until her death....
- Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin is a pioneer of the African-American civil rights movement. She was the first person to resist bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months. The court case stemming from her refusal to give up her seat on the bus, decided by...
- Clifford Durr
Clifford Durr was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras and who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses...
- Georgia Gilmore
Georgia Teresa Gilmore was an African American woman from Montgomery, Alabama who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott through her fund-raising effort selling food at the boycott’s mass meetings...
- Robert Graetz
Robert S. Graetz is a Lutheran clergyman who, as the white pastor of a black congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, openly supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a landmark event of the U.S. civil rights movement.-Role in civil rights movement:...
- Fred Gray
- Grover Hall, Jr.
- Jake Peters
- Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.Mrs...
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
- Gregory McDonel (Youngones)
- Edgar Nixon
Edgar Daniel Nixon was an African American civil rights leader and union organizer who played a crucial role in organizing the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Nixon also led the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, known as the Pullman Porters...
- Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
- Mother Pollard
Mother Pollard was one of the participants in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King Jr. recounted in his writings that after several weeks of walking to her destinations rather than take the bus, Mother Pollard was asked if she was tired, to which she replied, "My feets is tired, but my...
- Jo Ann Robinson
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama. Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a...
- Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
- Glen Smiley
- Mary Louise Smith
Mary Louise Smith is a civil rights protester. She is famous as one of the pre-Rosa Parks women who refused to give up their seat in the "whites only" section of Montgomery, Alabama city buses. She was 18 years old when she was arrested.Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Smith has lived there since...
- Kayla Michelle Smith
- Ellery Packard
- Nate Singleton
Nathaniel "Nate" Singleton III is a former professional American football wide receiver in the National Football League. He played five seasons for the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens ....
- Jo Ann Robinson
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama. Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a...
Organizations
(from
Who Was Involved)
- Women's Political Council
The Women's Political Council, founded in Montgomery, Alabama, was an organization that was part of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.. Members included Mary Fair Burks, Jo Ann Robinson, Irene West, and Uretta Adair...
- Montgomery Improvement Association
The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed on December 5, 1955 by black ministers and community leaders in Montgomery, Alabama. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr...
- Fellowship of Reconciliation
The Fellowship of Reconciliation is the name used by a number of religious nonviolent organizations, particularly in English-speaking countries...
- Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
- Committee for Nonviolent Integration
- Men of Montgomery
- The Club from Nowhere
Georgia Teresa Gilmore was an African American woman from Montgomery, Alabama who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott through her fund-raising effort selling food at the boycott’s mass meetings...
See also
- 1957 Alexandra Bus Boycott
The 1957 Alexandra Bus Boycott was a protest undertaken against the Public Utility Transport Corporation by the people of Alexandra in Johannesburg....
- Bristol Bus Boycott, 1963
The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 arose from the refusal of the Bristol Omnibus Company to employ Black or Asian bus crews in Bristol, England. In common with other British cities there was widespread discrimination in housing and employment at that time against "coloureds." Led by youth worker...
- Jim Crow laws#Public arena
- The Long Walk Home
The Long Walk Home is a 1990 film starring Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg.-Origins:The feature film is based on a short screenplay of the same name, written by John Cork. While a student at USC, Cork submitted his script for consideration by the Cinema Department, hoping to also direct. While...
Further reading
- Berg, Allison, “Trauma and Testimony in Black Women’s Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don’t Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta,” Journal of Women’s History, 21 (Fall 2009), 84–107.
- Branch, Taylor. Parting The Waters: America In The King Years, 1954-63 (1988; New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1989). ISBN 0-671-68742-5
- Clayborne Carson et al., editors, Eyes on The Prize Civil Rights Reader: documents, speeches, and first hand accounts from the black freedom struggle (New York:Penguin Books, 1991). ISBN 0-14-015403-5
- Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (1986) ISBN 0-394-75623-1
- David J. Garrow, editor, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1987). ISBN 0-87049-527-5
- Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom. ISBN 0-06-250490-8
- Aldon D. Morris, The Origins Of The Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing For Change (New York: The Free Press, 1984). ISBN 0-02-922130-7
- Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: The Story Of The Civil Rights Movement In The Deep South. ISBN 0-14-006753-1
- Juan Williams, Eyes on The Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988). ISBN 0-14-009653-1
- Walsh Frank, Landmark Events in American History: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- Russell Freedman, "Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott"
External links