The Montgomery Bus Boycott

      King had been the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama only a little more than a year when the city’s small group of civil rights advocates decided to contest racial segregation on the city’s public bus system.  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, decided not to surrender her seat to a white passenger.  She was arrested for her violation of the city’s segregation laws.  Activists quickly organized, believing that this was a prime opportunity to challenge the city’s unfair bus laws.  The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to boycott the transit system where they chose King as their leader.  There were several advantages for choosing King as the leader.  He was young, well-trained, and too new in town to have made enemies just yet.  His family was well respected and he had connections. 

First, a Little About Rosa Parks

     Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama.  Her father was James McCauley, and her mother was Leona Edwards.  Rosa was of African-American, Cherokee-Creek, and Scots-Irish ancestry.  When her parents separated, Rosa, her brother, and her mother moved to Pine Level where she lived with her maternal grandparents.  She attended a rural school until she was eleven and enrolled at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery.  Later she attended a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for her secondary education.  However, she was forced to drop out to take care of her grandmother, and later, her mother, who both were sick.

       At this time, there was segregation in the south, including on public transportation.  While there were not separate vehicles provided for different races, there were seating policies that required whites to sit in the front and blacks to sit in the back.  If there were not enough seats for the whites, the blacks must give up their seat.  Another bus transportation routine was for a black person to enter the front of the bus to pay the fare, and then exit the bus only to reenter in the back.  Rosa had continual reminders of discrimination and racism.  For example, she listened to the stories her grandparents shared about slavery, as they both had been slaves.  Her grandfather used to guard the family’s home with a shotgun from the Ku Klux Klan which was prevalent.  Additionally, her childhood school, The Montgomery Industrial School, was founded and run by white northerners for white children.  This school was burned twice by arsonists, and the faculty of the school was treated badly by the remainder of the white community. 

     In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, who was a barber from Montgomery.  Raymond encouraged Rosa to return to school, which she did, since she had been unable to complete school due to her mother and grandmother’s illnesses.  At this time, less than 7% of African Americans had a high school diploma.  Rosa’s husband, Raymond, was involved with the NAACP, so she became involved too.  She became the volunteer secretary to the president, Edgar Nixon.  Four days before Rosa’s bus incident, a young man, Emmett Till, was murdered at the age of fourteen for supposedly whistling at a white woman.  This event is considered one of the events that lead to the American Civil Rights Movement. 

    There had originally been a high school student, Claudette Colvin, who was a member of the NAACP’s Youth Council, who had refused to give up her seat in the bus to a white man.  When they found out that Colvin was pregnant with a much older married man’s baby, a legal case never materialized. 

       Parks boarded a Cleveland Avenue bus around 6 p.m. on Thursday, December 1, 1955 in downtown Montgomery.  She paid her fare and sat in the first row of the back seats in the “colored” section.  The bus driver, James F. Blake, was the same bus driver who had left her in the rain years before when she dropped her purse.  When Rosa was told to give up her seat, she refused.  The bus driver called the police and had Rosa arrested.  Rosa was charged with a violation of a segregation law from the Montgomery City code.  She was bailed out of jail by Clifford Durr and E.D. Nixon.  Four days later, Rosa was tried on charges of disorderly conduct as well as violating a local ordinance.  The 30 minute trial ended with Parks being found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.  Rosa appealed her conviction and challenged the legality of racial segregation. 

      On December 5, 1955, a group of people met at the Mt. Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies.  The group decided to form an organization, and the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed.  They elected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the leadership position.  Fifty leaders from the African American community gathered together to make a plan.  Rosa was an acceptable plaintiff because she was employed, securely married, and had a quiet and dignified manner.  The Montgomery Improvement Association encouraged all African Americans, children and adults alike, to stay off the buses on Monday in protest of the arrest and trial of Rosa Parks.  The one day boycott was very successful.  Many black people rode in carpools and others walked.  The boycott continued, and ended up lasting for 381 days. 

     As expected, segregationists were not happy.  Many black churches were burned or dynamited.  Martin Luther King’s home was bombed on January 30, 1956, and E.D. Nixon’s home was additionally attacked.  However, the boycott continued.  The result was that the segregation laws were thrown out and Martin Luther King became the face of the Civil Rights Movement. 

     Martin Luther King was a man who had extraordinary courage.  He believed in nonviolence.  During his lifetime he faced hundreds of death threats.  His wife and young children were in his home when it was bombed.  Martin Luther King was also hounded by the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover.  They bugged his telephone and hotel rooms, started gossip about him, and even tried to force him to commit suicide. 

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

     King knew that there needed to be a mass movement that could capitalize on the successful action in Montgomery with the bus boycott.  Therefore he set out to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which would give him a base of operation and a national platform to be able to speak out about civil rights issues across the nation.  In February of 1959, Martin and his group were received by the prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.  They discussed the Gandhian concepts of peaceful noncompliance, and King became increasingly determined to use nonviolent resistance to help oppressed people move forward.  In 1960, Martin moved back to Atlanta, where he became the co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.  Here he agreed to support the sit-ins and was arrested along with 33 young people who were protesting segregation at the lunch counter in an Atlanta department store.  Though charges were dropped, King was sentenced to Reidsville State Prison Farm on the pretext that he had been in violation of his probation for a minor traffic offense he had committed several months prior.  This case received national attention and many were concerned over his safety.  They were also upset that President Dwight Eisenhower did not intervene.  King was released based on the interference of John F. Kennedy, presidential candidate at the time. 

     From 1960 to 1965, King’s influence continued to grow.  He received the attention of the news media and continued to be involved in nonviolent protest, such as protest marches and sit-ins.  In the spring of 1963, Martin’s campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices received nationwide attention when the police turned fire hoses and dogs on the demonstrators.  Martin Luther King and many of his supporters were jailed, and these supporters included schoolchildren.  From his Birmingham jail cell, he wrote his famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”  On August 28, 1963, King organized an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 people who gathered at Washington D.C. to demand equal justice for all citizens.  This is where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream" speech.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in facilities that are publicly owned.  This also applied to employment.  In 1964, King was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway in December. 

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