In December of
1955, 42,000 black residents of Montgomery began a year-long boycott of
city buses to protest racially segregated seating. After 381 days of
taking taxis, carpooling, and walking the
hostile streets of Montgomery, African Americans eventually won their
fight to desegregate seating on public buses, not only in Montgomery, but
throughout the United States.
The protest was first organized by the Women's Political Council as a
one-day boycott to coincide with the trial of
Rosa Parks, who had been
arrested on December 2, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat to a white
man on a segregated Montgomery bus. By the next morning, the Council, led
by JoAnn Robinson, had printed 52,000 fliers asking
Montgomery blacks to stay off public buses on December 5, the day of the
trial. Meanwhile, labor activist E.D.
Nixon, who had bailed Parks out of jail, notified Ralph Abernathy,
minister of the First Baptist Church, and Martin Luther King Jr., the new
minister at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, of Parks' arrest. A group of
about 50 black leaders and one white minister, Robert Graetz, gathered in
the basement of King's church to endorse the boycott and begin planning a
massive rally for the evening of the trial.
On the morning of Parks' trial, buses rumbled nearly empty through the
streets of Montgomery. Police officers with shotguns roamed in search of
imaginary "Negro goon squads" whom they believed were forcing blacks to
stay off the buses.
Parks lost her case and was convicted of violating the segregated seating
laws, black leaders met again to organize an extension of the bus boycott.
To this end, they formed the Montgomery Improvement Association
(MIA), and elected King as its president. That evening, 7000 blacks
crowded into Holt Street Baptist Church, where King addressed and inspired
the audience with his words: "There
comes a time when people get tired of
being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression." Even as the protesters and black leaders were confronted with escalating violence,
they maintained both nonviolent resistance and their exhausting
schedule without public transportation. In June, a federal court
ruled segregated seating unconstitutional, and the case went on appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court under the case name
Browder v. Gayle. (also
see Claudette Colvin)
The Montgomery Bus Boycott had
implications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses.
The protest propelled the Civil Rights Movement into national
consciousness and Martin Luther King Jr. into the public eye.
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