Civil Rights Events

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Boycott Begins

 

Arrested December 1, 1955, for violating the Montgomery city ordinance that required black riders of city busses to give up their seats to whites when the section of seats reserved for whites was full, Rosa Parks was fined $10, plus $4 in court fees.  She immediately called E. D. Nixon, who, assisted by activist lawyers Clifford and Virginia Durr, had her released on bail. 

 

Clifford Durr wanted to get the case dismissed, but E.D. Nixon saw the opportunity to use Mrs. Parks’ case as an ideal middle class, respectable plaintiff to challenge segregation. Raymond Parks didn’t agree. After much debate, she and Raymond made the difficult, courageous choice knowing they’d probably lose everything as a result (Schmitz 7).

 

Mrs. Parks was “a faithful member of St. Paul AME Church in Montgomery.  She taught Sunday school during the 9:30 morning hour and helped prepare the Lord’s Supper during the 10:30 hour. 

 

According to James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, what set Parks apart was that she had an almost “biblical quality.” “There was,” he recalled, “a strange religious glow about Rosa — a kind of humming Christian light” (Taylor 1).

 

Rosa and Raymond, however, were not middle class blacks.  We have this myth that she's middle-class. They're not middle class. They're living in the Cleveland Courts projects when she makes her bus stand. Their income is cut in half. … She loses her job; her husband loses his job. They never find steady work in Montgomery ever again.  … In fact, it takes 11 years for the Parks to post an annual income equal to what they're making in 1955. They will move to Detroit in 1957 because things are so tough in Montgomery (NPR 2).

 

Questioned about Mrs. Parks’s selection  to be the public face in the black citizens’ challenge to the city ordinance,  Claudette Colvin said that  the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable."

 

She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.

 

"Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile."

 

After Colvin's arrest, she found herself shunned by parts of her community. She experienced various difficulties and became pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt she was an inappropriate symbol for a test case (Adler 1).

 

Released from jail, Mrs. Parks called Fred Gray, who she had had lunch with that day, and asked him to represent her. Mr. Gray called Jo Ann Robinson, a leader of The Women’s Political Council, a group of African American women who had been calling for a bus boycott. Ms. Robinson called E.D. Nixon, and they agreed to call a bus boycott for Monday, the day of Mrs. Parks’ arraignment. Along with another staff member and two students, she [Robinson] used the mimeograph machine overnight at Alabama State College to print more than 15,000 fliers. Can you imagine doing that many fliers today, let alone on 1955 technology? This was especially risky since the university was funded by the segregationist state legislature. The Women’s Political Council members met her at dawn and fanned the community with the fliers Friday morning (Schmitz 8).  The fliers read: “Don’t ride the bus to work, town, to school, or any place Monday, December 5. . . . Come to a mass meeting, Monday at 7:00 P.M. at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instruction” (Montgomery 1).

 

At 6 AM, E.D. Nixon phoned Rev. Ralph Abernathy of First Baptist Church and suggested pulling the pastors together that night for a meeting. Rev. Abernathy suggested that he call the newest pastor in town Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church because he had no set alliances, enemies, and had little to lose if things didn’t work out. Dr. King was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed with prodding from Rev. Abernathy. About 50 pastors met Friday night with Mrs. Parks and Ms. Robinson. They agreed to support the boycott from their pulpits on Sunday and announce a mass meeting for Monday night.

 

On Saturday, Mrs. Parks went to Alabama State College where she was conducting a leadership training for the NAACP. She was discouraged when only 5 students attended. She was no longer discouraged on Monday, when she and other leaders marveled at the empty buses and the streets filled with African American citizens walking to school and work. The boycott was on.

 

Leaders gathered Monday afternoon before the mass meeting to plan an organization to sustain the boycott effort, The Montgomery Improvement Association. Rufus Lewis was a business man and rival of E.D. Nixon’s. He did not want Nixon to lead the new organization, so he nominated his pastor, Dr. King, to lead it, arguing that he was a neutral choice (and hoping he could pull strings from behind). That is how Dr. King was drafted into movement leadership. That night, 15,000 people attended a mass meeting and new 26 year old MIA President Dr. King’s prophetic oratory inspired them to commit to the boycott (Schmitz 9-10).

 

“There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression,” King explained … “There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time” (Taylor 2).

 

Mrs. Parks never spoke or was consulted on strategy. Sexism and a desire to make her sound more sympathetic converted the experienced activist into a “tired seamstress” (Schmitz 10).

 

 

Works cited:

 

Adler, Margot.  “Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin.”  NPR.  March 15, 2009.  Web.  < https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin.>

 

“The Montgomery Bus Boycott.”  Khan Academy.  Web.   < https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/civil-rights-movement/a/the-montgomery-bus-boycott.>

 

“No Meekness Here: Meet Rosa Parks, 'Lifelong Freedom Fighter'.”  NPR Books.  Web.  < https://www.npr.org/2015/11/29/457627426/understanding-rosa-parks-as-a-life-long-freedom-fighter.>

 

Schmitz, Paul.  “How Change Happens: The Real Story of Mrs. Rosa Parks & The Montgomery Bus Boycott.”  HUFFPOST.  Web.  <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-schmitz/how-change-happens-the-re_b_6237544.html.>

 

Taylor, Justin.  “5 Myths about Rosa Parks, the woman who had almost a ‘biblical quality’.”  The Washington Post.  December 1, 2015.  Web.  <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/01/5-myths-about-rosa-parks-the-woman-who-had-almost-a-biblical-quality/?utm_term=.9b89a31dae83.>