montgomery bus boycott essay plan

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

• Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE
• Black Power
• The Civil Rights Movement
• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks , a black seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat so that white passengers could sit in it.
• Rosa Parks’s arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott , during which the black citizens of Montgomery refused to ride the city’s buses in protest over the bus system’s policy of racial segregation. It was the first mass-action of the modern civil rights era, and served as an inspiration to other civil rights activists across the nation.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. , a Baptist minister who endorsed nonviolent civil disobedience, emerged as leader of the Boycott.
• Following a November 1956 ruling by the Supreme Court that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, the bus boycott ended successfully. It had lasted 381 days.

Rosa Parks’s arrest

Origins of the bus boycott, the boycott succeeds, what do you think.

• William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II , eighth edition (New York: Oxford U.P., 2015), 153-154. For the details of her arrest see, “Police Department, City of Montgomery—Rosa Parks Arrest Report,” December 1, 1955.
• See James Patterson, *Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 400; Davis Houck, and Matthew Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), x.
• See Patterson, Grand Expectations , 400-401.
• Patterson, Grand Expectations , 405.
• Quoted in Chafe, The Unfinished Journey , 156.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956

Sparked by the arrest of Rosa  Parks  on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The  Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. In  Stride Toward Freedom , King’s 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights.

The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The  Women’s Political Council  (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they sought for Montgomery’s bus system: no one standing over empty seats; a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and a policy that would require buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities. When the meeting failed to produce any meaningful change, WPC president Jo Ann  Robinson  reiterated the council’s requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, telling him, “There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses” (“A Letter from the Women’s Political Council”).

A year after the WPC’s meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus. Seven months later, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery’s black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year.

King recalled in his memoir that “Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,” and because “her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted” she was “one of the most respected people in the Negro community” (King, 44). Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks’ arrest by calling for a one-day protest of the city’s buses on 5 December 1955. Robinson prepared a series of leaflets at Alabama State College and organized groups to distribute them throughout the black community. Meanwhile, after securing bail for Parks with Clifford and Virginia  Durr , E. D.  Nixon , past leader of the Montgomery chapter of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP), began to call local black leaders, including Ralph  Abernathy  and King, to organize a planning meeting. On 2 December, black ministers and leaders met at  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church  and agreed to publicize the 5 December boycott. The planned protest received unexpected publicity in the weekend newspapers and in radio and television reports.

On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city’s ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president. Parks recalled: “The advantage of having Dr. King as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies” (Parks, 136).

That evening, at a mass meeting at  Holt Street Baptist Church , the MIA voted to continue the boycott. King spoke to several thousand people at the meeting: “I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong” ( Papers  3:73 ). After unsuccessful talks with city commissioners and bus company officials, on 8 December the MIA issued a formal list of demands: courteous treatment by bus operators; first-come, first-served seating for all, with blacks seating from the rear and whites from the front; and black bus operators on predominately black routes.

The demands were not met, and Montgomery’s black residents stayed off the buses through 1956, despite efforts by city officials and white citizens to defeat the boycott. After the city began to penalize black taxi drivers for aiding the boycotters, the MIA organized a carpool. Following the advice of T. J.  Jemison , who had organized a carpool during a 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, the MIA developed an intricate carpool system of about 300 cars. Robert  Hughes  and others from the Alabama Council for Human Relations organized meetings between the MIA and city officials, but no agreements were reached.

In early 1956, the homes of King and E. D. Nixon were bombed. King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: “Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place” ( Papers  3:115 ). City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr.  Despite this resistance, the boycott continued.

Although most of the publicity about the protest was centered on the actions of black ministers, women played crucial roles in the success of the boycott. Women such as Robinson, Johnnie  Carr , and Irene  West  sustained the MIA committees and volunteer networks. Mary Fair Burks of the WPC also attributed the success of the boycott to “the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation” (Burks, “Trailblazers,” 82). In his memoir, King quotes an elderly woman who proclaimed that she had joined the boycott not for her own benefit but for the good of her children and grandchildren (King, 78).

National coverage of the boycott and King’s trial resulted in support from people outside Montgomery. In early 1956 veteran pacifists Bayard  Rustin  and Glenn E.  Smiley  visited Montgomery and offered King advice on the application of Gandhian techniques and  nonviolence  to American race relations. Rustin, Ella  Baker , and Stanley  Levison  founded  In Friendship  to raise funds in the North for southern civil rights efforts, including the bus boycott. King absorbed ideas from these proponents of nonviolent direct action and crafted his own syntheses of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. He said: “Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail”). Other followers of Gandhian ideas such as Richard  Gregg , William Stuart  Nelson , and Homer  Jack  wrote the MIA offering support.

On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in  Browder v. Gayle  that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed  Browder v. Gayle  and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses. The court’s decision came the same day that King and the MIA were in circuit court challenging an injunction against the MIA carpools. Resolved not to end the boycott until the order to desegregate the buses actually arrived in Montgomery, the MIA operated without the carpool system for a month. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, and on 20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott; the community agreed. The next morning, he boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery” ( Papers  3:486 ). King’s role in the bus boycott garnered international attention, and the MIA’s tactics of combining mass nonviolent protest with Christian ethics became the model for challenging segregation in the South.

Joe Azbell, “Blast Rocks Residence of Bus Boycott Leader,” 31 January 1956, in  Papers  3:114–115 .

Baker to King, 24 February 1956, in  Papers  3:139 .

Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in  Women in the Civil Rights Movement , ed. Crawford et al., 1990.

“Don’t Ride the Bus,” 2 December 1955, in  Papers  3:67 .

U. J. Fields, Minutes of Montgomery Improvement Association Founding Meeting, 5 December 1955, in  Papers  3:68–70 .

Gregg to King, 2 April 1956, in  Papers  3:211–212 .

Indictment,  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr., et al. , 21 February 1956, in  Papers  3:132–133 .

Introduction, in  Papers  3:3–7 ;  17–21 ;  29 .

Jack to King, 16 March 1956, in  Papers  3:178–179 .

Judgment and Sentence of the Court,  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr. , 22 March 1956, in  Papers  3:197 .

King, Statement on Ending the Bus Boycott, 20 December 1956, in  Papers  3:485–487 .

King,  Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.

King, Testimony in  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr. , 22 March 1956, in  Papers  3:183–196 .

King to the National City Lines, Inc., 8 December 1955, in  Papers  3:80–81 .

“A Letter from the Women’s Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama,” in  Eyes on the Prize , ed. Carson et al., 1991.

MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, 5 December 1955, in  Papers  3:71–79 .

Nelson to King, 21 March 1956, in  Papers  3:182–183 .

Parks and Haskins,  Rosa Parks , 1992.

Robinson,  Montgomery Bus Boycott , 1987.

Stanley Rowland, Jr., “2,500 Here Hail Boycott Leader,”  New York Times , 26 March 1956.

Rustin to King, 23 December 1956, in  Papers  3:491–494 .

Teaching About the Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is one of the most famous events of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, featuring one of the movement’s most iconic figures, Rosa Parks. However, the boycott’s historical context and organizing strategies are often erased or glossed over in textbooks and classroom teaching. And when events are removed from context, there is an increased risk of distortion or suppression of information necessary for honest and accurate historical analysis.

Rosa Parks wasn’t simply tired, and she wasn’t merely protesting one single injustice or instance of discrimination. She and other civil rights activists were strategically challenging a system of Jim Crow laws and segregation policies that restricted Black Americans’ rights and relegated them to second-class citizenship. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an organized protest and part of a broader movement for equality, a movement that reaches back to Reconstruction and earlier—and continues into the present day. The boycott’s strategies, goals and successes were shaped by the context and activism that came before it, just as this historic boycott and its participants influenced the activism that came afterward (and is still ongoing). It is essential to resist telling a simple story about this pivotal moment in the Black freedom movement.

Learning for Justice’s curriculum framework Teaching the Civil Rights Movement provides strategies, essential knowledge and historical context for teaching about the movement for equality and civil rights for Black Americans, from Reconstruction to the present. Learning about the Montgomery Bus Boycott is an opportunity for young people to situate this historical event within the narrative of a larger movement. As the framework’s introduction points out, “By engaging young people in a more inclusive history and activist pedagogy, students can make connections between past and present, recognizing the relevance of history to today’s justice and civil rights movements.”

The following guiding principles, essential knowledge and resources for teaching about the Montgomery Bus Boycott are excerpted and adapted from Teaching the Civil Rights Movement . The complete curriculum framework is available as an online resource and as a PDF that you can download .

Guiding Principles for Teaching About the Civil Rights Movement

Being reflective and intentional about how we teach the honest history and activist pedagogy of the Black movement for equality and civil rights is essential for engaging young people in this history and its connections to their lives. The following is an overview of recommended practices; more details can be found in the Guiding Principles section of Teaching the Civil Rights Movement .

Practice 1: Connect to the present.

• Build bridges between current events and the long history of the Black movement for equality and civil rights.
• Encourage young people to make connections between the history—especially the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and justice and civil rights movements today.
• Address goals of the Black movement for equality and civil rights that remain unmet.
• Make the history and today’s justice and civil rights movements relevant to young people’s lives by drawing on local issues and community struggles.
• Use project-based learning and performance tasks to assess learning and its application in young people’s own lives.

Practice 2: Know how to talk about race and racism.

• Recognize how our identities and experiences can affect our feelings about topics of race and racism. Take time to consider your own identities and relationships to this history.
• Dispel ideas about a biological basis for race and help young people understand race as a social construction.
• Help young people understand the social and legal constructions surrounding race and how race has been used as a means of control throughout history.
• Be conscious and curious about the ways race is important in your students’ lives.
• Allow opportunities for young people to discuss, in a supportive environment, their experiences with race and racism.
• Avoid race-neutral language and acknowledge contemporary racial disparities.

Practice 3: Educate to realize power.

• Challenge young people to question the assumptions and historical narratives they have been taught by developing their critical thinking and questioning skills.
• Prepare young people today to be change agents and participants in history by emphasizing the importance of young people in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
• Introduce young people to role models in their schools and communities who can serve as strong examples of change-makers.
• Provide experiential learning opportunities that allow young people to apply what they learn.
• Teach the tactics and strategies of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and encourage young people to think creatively about how they can address injustice today.

Practice 4: Reveal the unseen.

• Teach the wider Black freedom struggle that took place across the country (not just in the South) and in daily life (not only in the political sphere).
• Shift the focus from familiar heroes and villains to lesser-known individuals.
• Offer broader viewpoints of history by drawing upon original sources and personal narratives and testimonies.
• Be conscious of (and encourage young people’s awareness of) bias, language and context in source documents.
• Promote a model of learning as discovery in which young people are producers of knowledge and meaning rather than passive receptacles.

Practice 5: Resist telling a simple story.

• Avoid presenting sanitized accounts of history that obscure the realities of racial violence and systems of racial control.
• Address the work that remains to be done, current inequalities and challenges to racial justice.
• Shift young people’s thinking away from individuals and toward systems and institutions.
• Dispel the “Malcolm X vs. MLK” dichotomy that casts the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s as divided over nonviolent resistance.
• Present the Black movement for equality and civil rights in the United States from a global perspective that reveals its international implications.

Teaching the Civil Rights Movement is organized into four chronological periods. The summary objectives and essential knowledge in the framework outline the concepts, analytical skills and historical information students should know. Multiple resources are provided to help plan and teach each essential knowledge.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is addressed in the Teaching the Civil Rights Movement section “Important Gains and Work Unfinished: 1945-1980.” Summary Objective 4 sets the goal for young people to “evaluate the ways that a combination of legal, legislative and activist strategies in the late 1940s and 1950s for achieving political and social equality advanced the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.”

While all the essential knowledge (4.A to 4.E) for this summary objective emphasize what young people should know and provide the historical context of the time, 4.B focuses specifically on the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

4.B. Using direct action, local groups organized boycotts and protests. One of the most famous of these was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This yearlong protest, beginning in December 1955 and organized by a broad coalition, ultimately played a role in a Supreme Court decision mandating the desegregation of city buses.

The following resources listed in Teaching the Civil Rights Movement provide options for teaching about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

• To better understand a story that’s often oversimplified, young people can research the roles that a broad coalition of activists and organizations played in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Educators can begin by listening to the Teaching Hard History podcast episode “The Real Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”
• For more support teaching about Parks, you can explore the Zinn Education Project lesson “The Rebellious Lives of Mrs. Rosa Parks.”
• The documentary The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks , available on Peacock, provides a fuller, more honest retelling of civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ work. Along with archival footage of Parks’ interviews and speeches, family members, others who knew her and modern activists make appearances to shed light on her life. In addition, this film offers opportunities to examine how gender and class issues also affected the civil rights movement.
• While the boycott thrust Martin Luther King Jr. onto a national stage, it was also the work of a coalition of activists. Black women played key roles in organizing some of the most famous protests of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott. To better understand this history, young people can review a 1954 “Letter Written From Jo Ann Robinson to Mayor W.A. Gayle,” in which the Montgomery Women’s Political Council president threatened the mayor with a bus boycott if African American riders did not receive fair treatment. And they can read or listen to the NPR story “Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin” to learn more about the 15-year-old girl who refused to vacate her seat nine months before the boycott.
• For a better sense of the reality of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, young people should consider the sacrifice and the organization required for a community to forgo public transportation for over a year. Civil Rights Movement Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement Archive includes a number of images of the planning and execution of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Additional Resources

Browder v. Gayle The most important civil rights case you’ve never heard of, explained in this article from LFJ magazine’s archive.

Dec. 5, 1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott Began A brief overview of the genesis of the boycott, courtesy of the Zinn Education Project, that hinges on its very first day.

Expanding the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott This lesson from the City University of New York’s Social History for Every Classroom initiative examines three documents to explore the role of local activists, especially women, in the boycott and the greater Civil Rights Movement.

Montgomery Bus Boycott (The King Institute) This overview from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University includes a special focus on King’s role in the boycott.

Montgomery Bus Boycott (Stanford History Education Group) The Stanford History Education Group offers free downloads of teacher and student materials (account required) for its lesson about the boycott.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Understanding the Organizing Tradition This Zinn Education Project lesson focuses on how the tactics of activists—which evolved over time in response to mounting white resistance—helped secure the boycott’s victory.

Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott A collection of resources from Civil Rights Teaching to help explore a more complete story of the boycott.

Teaching The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks This educator’s guide from the Zinn Education Project covers both the 2021 young adult book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and the 2022 documentary based on it ( available on Peacock ).

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Pieces of History

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

In commemoration of the anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, today’s post comes from Sarah Basilion, an intern in the National Archives History Office.

Sixty years ago, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, public bus.

On December 1, 1955, Parks, a seamstress and secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was taking the bus home after a long day of work.

The white section of the bus had filled, so the driver asked Parks to give up her seat in the designated black section of the bus to accommodate a white passenger.

She refused to move.

When it became apparent after several minutes of argument that Parks would not relent, the bus driver called the police. Parks was arrested for being in violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code, which upheld a policy of racial segregation on public buses.

Parks was not the first person to engage in this act of civil disobedience.

Earlier that year, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested, but local civil rights leaders were concerned that she was too young and poor to be a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge segregation.

Parks—a middle-class, well-respected civil rights activist—was the ideal candidate.

Just a few days after Parks’s arrest, activists announced plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The boycott, which officially began December 5, 1955, did not support just Parks but countless other African Americans who had been arrested for the same reason.

E. D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP chapter, called for all African-American citizens to boycott the public bus system to protest the segregation policy. Nixon and his supporters vowed to abstain from riding Montgomery public buses until the policy was abolished.

Instead of buses, African Americans took taxis driven by black drivers who had lowered their fares in support of the boycott, walked, cycled, drove private cars, and even rode mules or drove in horse-drawn carriages to get around. African-American citizens made up a full three-quarters of regular bus riders, causing the boycott to have a strong economic impact on the public transportation system and on the city of Montgomery as a whole.

The boycott was proving to be a successful means of protest.

The city of Montgomery tried multiple tactics to subvert the efforts of boycotters. They instituted regulations for cab fares that prevented black cab drivers from offering lower fares to support boycotters. The city also pressured car insurance companies to revoke or refuse insurance to black car owners so they could not use their private vehicles for transportation in lieu of taking the bus.

Montgomery’s efforts were futile as the local black community, with the support of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., churches—and citizens around the nation—were determined to continue with the boycott until their demand for racially integrated buses was met.

The boycott lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested, to December 20, 1956, when  Browder v. Gayle , a Federal ruling declaring racially segregated seating on buses to be unconstitutional, took effect.

Although it took more than a year, Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat on a public bus sparked incredible change that would forever impact civil rights in the United States.

Parks continued to raise awareness for the black struggle in America and the Civil Rights movement for the rest of her life. For her efforts she was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the executive branch, and the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor given by the legislative branch.

To learn more about the life of Rosa Parks, read Michael Hussey’s 2013  Pieces of History  post Honoring the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. ”

And plan your visit to the National Archives to view similar documents in our “ Records of Rights ” exhibit or  explore documents in our online catalog .

Copies of documents relating to Parks’s arrest submitted as evidence in the Browder v. Gayle case are held in the National Archives at Atlanta in Morrow, Georgia.

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Montgomery bus boycott.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was one of the first successful mass actions of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The boycott is often understood in overly-simplified terms - the result of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. In this lesson, students build a more complex understanding of the causes and context of the boycott as they analyze four historical documents. 

Image: Photo of Black residents walking during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. From  BlackPast.org .

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Home Lessons IBDP History IB History Paper 1 Topics Prescribed subject 4: Rights and protest Civil Rights Movement in the United States (1954–1965) Montgomery Bus Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The “Montgomery Bus Boycott”, is a vibrant history lesson plan that brings the past to life in an accessible, engaging, and informative way. This worksheet invites your students to step back into the era of segregation and Jim Crow laws, helping them understand the significant events that led to one of American history’s most memorable acts of peaceful resistance.

The worksheet starts by setting the scene. Students will explore the era of segregation and how it affected everyday life. They’ll understand why Rosa Parks’ simple but powerful act of defiance on a Montgomery city bus became a spark that ignited a nationwide movement for civil rights.

They’ll learn about the extraordinary people behind the scenes, like E.D. Nixon, Ralph David Abernathy, and a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., whose leadership turned a local protest into a landmark event in American history. Students can use primary sources to explore these stories and deepen their understanding.

A key part of the lesson is understanding the strategies that made the boycott successful. Students will explore how careful planning, coordination, and community spirit helped keep the boycott going for over a year, despite the many challenges.

This lesson doesn’t shy away from the darker side of history either. Students will delve into the intimidation tactics used by segregation supporters and the courage of those who stood up to them. By looking at primary sources, students can understand the bravery and determination that characterised this period.

The “Montgomery Bus Boycott” worksheet is the perfect resource for teachers who want to give their students a memorable, in-depth, and meaningful exploration of a defining moment in American history. This engaging and student-friendly lesson plan brings history to life in your classroom, igniting a love of learning that will last a lifetime.

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Primary Sources: Civil Rights in America - Events: Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

• Alcatraz Occupation (1969)
• Brown v. Board of Ed. (1954)
• Central High (Little Rock, AK) [1957]
• Chicago Race Riot (1919)
• Dakota Access Pipeline/Standing Rock (2016)
• Emmett Tilll Murder (1955)
• ERA: Equal Rights Amendment
• Freedom Riders (1961)
• Freedom Summer (1964)
• Japanese Internment (1942)
• Loving v. Virginia (1967)
• March on Washington (1963)
• March on Washington Movement (1940s)
• Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike (1968)
• Mendez v. Westminster School District (1947)
• Miss America Protests (1968)
• "Mississippi Burning" Case (1964)
• Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
• Osage Indian Murders (1920s)
• 16th St. Church Bombing (1963)
• Selma to Montgomery March (1965)
• Scottsboro (1931)
• Sleepy Lagoon & Zoot Suit Riots (1943)
• Slavery & Abolition This link opens in a new window
• The Southern Manifesto (1956)
• Suffrage - Women
• Tulsa Race Massacre (1921)
• University of Alabama (1963)
• University of Mississippi (1962)
• Wounded Knee Occupation (1973)

Online Sources: Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

• An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks
• An African-American Woman Describes Segregated Buses in Montgomery, Alabama more... less... "During the Montgomery bus boycott, researchers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee visited Montgomery to learn more about the boycott and document it. Researcher Willie Lee interviewed an African-American woman who worked as a domestic, who described how black riders had been treated on the buses. She was interviewed at one of the several car pool stations established to transport the boycotters."
• African-American Women Threaten a Bus Boycott in Montgomery more... less... "This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met."
• Bayard Rustin Explains Car Pools in the Montgomery Bus Boycott more... less... "African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin advised Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the Montgomery bus boycott. In this excerpt from his diary, Rustin describes how the city's black residents found ways to get to and from work without using the buses."
• Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (M.D. Ala. 1956)
• Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955-1956 (CRMV)
• Interview with Rosa Parks (video) more... less... "Interview with Rosa Parks conducted for Eyes on the Prize I. Discussion centers on life in Montgomery, her decision to refuse to comply with segregation on the bus line, and the bus boycott."
• INVESTIGATE: Why did the boycott of Montgomery's buses succeed? more... less... Provides a selection of related primary sources.
• Local Activists Call for a Bus Boycott in Montgomery more... less... "This leaflet, produced by Jo Ann Robinson and others in response to Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, called for all African Americans to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5. Robinson was president of the Women's Political Council, an organization of African-American professional women who worked for greater political influence from the Black community. She was later arrested for her role in the boycott."
• Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) [King Encyclopedia]
• Montgomery Bus Boycott (Civil Rights Digital Library)
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott: They Changed the World more... less... A website from the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper that includes photos, interviews, etc.
• Montgomery Improvement Association Advises on Integrated Bus Patronage more... less... "The U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended the Montgomery bus boycott introduced integrated public transportation to the city in December 1956. Anticipating mixed reactions to the boycott's success, the Montgomery Improvement Association distributed this pamphlet as an advisory guide to passengers reboarding the buses after a year of protest."
• The Other Rosa Parks: Now 73, Claudette Colvin Was First to Refuse Giving Up Seat on Montgomery Bus
• The Power of African American Women Disc 1 more... less... Part 1: "Commentary of a Black Souther Busrider" by Rosa Parks (April 1956 interview) Part 2: "We Want To Be Free" by Dorothy Dandridge (speaking at a Freedom Rally at Wrigley Field, 26 May 1963) Part 3: "The Negro In American Culture" by Lorraine Hansberry (From a panel on Black perceptions of the American setting in art. WBAI, 10 january 1961)
• The Power of African American Women Disc 8 more... less... "The Power Of African-American Women" Four part program which examines the work and impact of several African-American women: Sweet Honey in the Rock, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Rosa Parks.
• Rare 1956 Interview with Parks During the Montgomery Bus Boycott more... less... "Rosa Parks, interviewed in April 1956 by Pacifica radio station KPFA. The interview comes from the “”:In Pacifica Radio Archives."
• Reverend Abernathy Recalls the Montgomery Improvement Association's First Meeting more... less... "In the following excerpt, Reverend Ralph Abernathy remembers the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) at a local Baptist church on the first day of the boycott. After this, the MIA held regular weekly meetings until the boycott ended."
• Rosa Parks Papers (Library of Congress) more... less... "The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division. The collection documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans." Library of Congress

Book Sources: Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

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Martin Luther King and the Montgomery bus boycott for Leaving Cert History #625Lab

What was the contribution of martin luther king to the montgomery bus boycott and to other aspects of us life.

#625Lab – History , marked 85/100, detailed feedback at the very bottom. You may also like:  Leaving Cert History Guide  (€).

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a well-known civil rights leader and activist who had a great deal of influence on American society in the 1950s and 1960s. He contributed greatly to the events of the Montgomery bus boycott and to other aspects of US life through his non-violent actions. In 1954 in America, the US Supreme Court removed the legal basis for segregation in education. However, in the southern states Jim Crow laws continued to enforce segregation and discrimination in housing, transport and various public facilities.

In Montgomery, Alabama, a southern city with a long history of racial tension, segregated seating was present on buses. African American people could only sit at the back for the bus and had to stand up for a white people if the front seats were occupied. On the evening of 1 December 1955, an African American seamstress Rosa Parks got on a bus in downtown Montgomery. When asked to move to let a white person sit down, she refused. The police were called and minutes later, Rosa Parks was arrested. Parks was well known and respected in the African American community in Montgomery, and she has been secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. From jail she phoned Daniel Nixon, leader of the NAACP in Alabama. He agreed to pay her bail and decided that they could go the Supreme Court with this case, and boycott the bus. Nixon knew that challenging racism in the supreme courts would require the support of other African American leaders. He contacted the reverend Ralph Abernathy and the reverend Martin Luther King, a popular young baptist minister. King’s popularity in the community gave this case credibility.

A one day bus boycott for December 5, 1955 was organised by the women’s political committee, the day parks was due in court. Meanwhile, threats of violence against bus drivers were present in the African American community. In order to prevent violence, on 2 December Nixon , Abernathy and King called a meeting in King’s church. Over 40 religious and civic leaders from the African American community agreed to support the boycott. Their message was one of non co-operation. Organisers hoped that 60% of the community would back the boycott but it turned out to be almost 100%. King attended Rosa Parks’ trial that day where she was found guilty, and fined $14. Nixon called for an appeal.

The elders of the boycott met up and set up a permanent organisation for the boycott as they had already decided that it should last more than one day. They called it the Montgomery improvement association. Martin Luther King was unanimously elected leader of the group. That evening he addressed a huge crowd at a meeting held by the MIA. He urged them to follow non-violent Christian principles, to use persuasion, not coercion. The MIA wanted segregation on buses to end, black people to be treated with courtesy by bus drivers and for black drivers to be employed on the buses. King closed the meeting by calling on all those in favour to stand. Everybody stood. This was the grinning of King’s important contribution to the Montgomery bus boycott.

King was a dedicated and popular minister at the Dexter Anne Baptist church in Montgomery and was active in the local branch of the NAACP. He was young, energetic and a brilliant public speaker. King and the other leaders held meetings to plan strategy and set up a transportation committee to raise funds and organise alternative transport for African Americans. After Christmas 1955, when it became clear that the African American community were determined it continue the boycott, some white people began to use measures aimed at forcing them to give up. On 22 January the city announced that the boycott was over and that a settlement had been reached. King shut down these rumours by responding quickly and telling the African Americans to ignore these reports. It was quick thinking like this by King that ensured that the bus boycott was a success. He was also arrested for breaking an old law which prohibited boycotts. His arrest and trial made headlines and international news, bringing more publicity to the movement.

On 13 December, the US Supreme Court declared that segregated seating on public buses was unconstitutional. The Supreme court’s decision was to come into operation on 20 December 1956. On 21 December , in a symbolic gesture, King and a white minister, Glenn Smiley, sat together in what was previously a whites-only section on a bus. King and his associates had successfully made segregation on public transport illegal. He had successfully contributed to both the Montgomery bus boycott and to the Black Civil rights movement in America.

In 1957, King helped to set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Its aim was to continue working for change, using non-violent tactics. In 1958 the SCLC began its crusade to double the number of African- American voters in the South by 1960. In 1960, some African-American students began ‘sit-ins’ at segregated lunch counters. King supported them and was arrested in October 1960. This brought publicity to the protest. By the end of the year the peaceful sit-in campaign by over 50,000 young people had succeeded in desegregating public facilities in more than 100 cities in the south.

In April 1963, King organised a protest march in Birmingham, Alabama – a big industrial city known for its racial prejudice. The marchers filled the streets day after day, singing ‘We shall Overcome’. King was arrested, and his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ was one of the most effective documents of the civil rights movements. On 8 May, six thousand African-American children marched through Birmingham. On the following day the police chief, Eugene O’Connor, ordered is men to use water houses, electric cattle prods and dogs against the protesters. Crucially, these events were broadcast live on national television and shocked audiences, winning widespread white support for King. The president sent officials to negotiate with he city authorities. The violence ended and the protestors were granted most of their demands. Kennedy brought in a civil Rights Bill providing for an end to all discrimination and an extension of voting rights for African Americans. This bill was delayed by congress, but King still contributed greatly to the progression of civil rights for African Americans with this protest march.

One of Martin Luther’s most famous contributions to the Black civil rights movement occurred in August of 1963, when King led a march on Washington, D.C to demonstrate for ‘jobs and freedom’. Over 200,00 protestors joined the march and he made his famous ‘I have a dream speech’ . Kennedy feared that the march would make it difficult to get his civil rights bill passed but it was peaceful and orderly, and helped to get the bill passed a year later. The bill was passed in 1964, and it banned discrimination in all public accommodation, outlawed job discrimination and reduced the power of local voter registration boards to disqualify African Americans from voting. This was yet another victory for King and the movement. Martin Luther King condemned the Vietnam war. King said that the war wastes lives and misuses American resources. The Vietnam war went against hi non-violent agenda. This public condemnation contributed to public outcry concerning the war.

In 1964, small-scale violence erupted in Harlem. In August 1965, five days after the civil rights bill was signed by the President, a huge riot broke out in Watts, an African-American ghetto in Los Angeles. For six days, looting and fighting between African-American youths and police raged. The riot greatly upset King and he moved the SCLC headquarters to Chicago, determined to shift his focus from the south to the northern ghettos and the problems of jobs and housing. During the summers of 1966 and 1967, further rioting took place in the north . In 1967, 83 people were killed in 164 different riots, causing over $100 million in damages to property. The civil rights movement became divided as king appealed for calm and denounced the violence and insisted that militants only represented a minority of African Americans. In April 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His death seemed to destroy any hope of resolving the race problem.

Martin Luther King made enormous contributions to both the Montgomery bus boycott and to US life by progressing the Civil rights movement through non-violent means. He started a progression towards equality that ultimately resulted in the legal equality between black and white people in America in today’s society. He is remembered to this day as an iconic figure in the civil rights movement , both in America and internationally.

Feedback : This essay is a really good length and answers the question well. Your paragraphs are detailed and full of relevant historical fact, with lots of statistics. You use a few short quotations, but it would be better to incorporate a few more. Your introduction does its job well and the conclusion is good as it doesn’t just summarise, it also ties the topic into the present day. The way you use the order of importance in some of your key sentences, like “ One of Martin Luther’s most famous contributions ”, is good as it adds an extra layer to your judgement.

Cumulative Mark: For your cumulative mark, this would definitely achieve the maximum 60 out of 60 marks, as there are enough well-written paragraphs to accumulate this mark.

Overall Evaluation Mark: For Overall Evaluation, I’d give this about 25 marks out of 40. This is a really good mark, but you can improve it if you want by including some more quotation, doing some extra reading or by providing some more detailed analysis of the facts you present.

Total Mark: 85/100

Why did the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1956) take place, how was it carried out, and to what extent was it successful? (2015)

#625Lab – History , marked 90/100, detailed feedback at the very bottom. You may also like:  Leaving Cert History Guide  (€).

Although the American Constitution of 1791 declared that “all men were created equal… they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights”, this was a far cry from the reality reflected in society in the first half of the twentieth century. This was particularly true for states like Alabama in the Deep South where Jim Crow laws were enforced, which promoted a “separate but equal” treatment of the races. Alabama’s capital was Montgomery, a city with 50,000 blacks and 70,000 whites. The city’s bus company followed the pattern of segregation and harsh penalties were enforced on anyone who dared to question the status quo. In the middle of the twentieth century, however, this would change as a result of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a tremendous statement of defiance which would change the face of America.

It could be argued that the origins of the boycott have their roots in 1943, when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks paid for her bus fare and then watched the bus drive off as she tried to enter the bus through the blacks-only rear door. Like many black women at the time, Parks was working in a low-paid job and was now starting to question the treatment her race was receiving. The seed had been sown for the next episode in her career as an activist.

On Thursday 1st December 1955, she boarded a city bus on the way home from work and when the bus became full with white passengers and the driver demanded that four black passengers move back one row to make room, Parks refused. She iconically said “I don’t think I should have to” before being promptly arrested. Parks was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, so naturally E.D. Nixon, the organisation’s leader, took an interest in her case. He had been looking for somebody to test out his boundaries in the courts in the hope of getting Jim Crow laws declared as constitutional. He had been curious about the similar case of fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin months before, but when it was revealed that she was pregnant he lost interest as he needed to be certain that he “had somebody [he] could win with”. On the other hand, Parks was respectable, had been educated at the Laboratory School in Alabama State College and attended church regularly. After discussing the risks with her husband and mother, Rosa Parks agreed to be the figurehead of the campaign. This episode catalysed the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The boycott was organised by the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) with the aid of the Womens’ Political Council of Montgomery, led by Jo Ann Robinson, and the black ministers of Montgomery such as Martin Luther King. King was a great orator, and it was written that “as King spoke in a singsong cadence, his followers would cry and clap and sway, carried away by the magic of his oratory. With his help, 35,000 leaflets advertising the boycott were distributed at services the next Sunday.

In court on Monday the 5th of December Rosa Parks was fined $10 for civil disobedience and this coincided with the start of the boycott. It was met with great success, with most of the city’s black population complying. It was decided that the boycott would continue for as long as the City Council kept withholding the following: employment of black drivers on the buses, allocation of seats on a first come, first served basis, and the right to courteous treatment by drivers for all passengers, regardless of colour.

The leaders of the boycott collected money to buy station wagons for a private taxi service. Some of the money came from local black workers, the NAACP, the United Auto Workers’ Union and the Montgomery Jewish community, among other minorities. A carpool system was organised whereby people gathered at churches and waited to be collected by others to get to work in order to undermine the attitude of the boycott’s critics, who were adamant that the buses would be full again the next rainy morning. However, the boycotters’ tenacity was clearly underestimated and the boycott continued for a total of 381 days, until December 21st 1956, This was thanks to public donations, dedication and $30,000 being raised by the church.

The boycotters met fierce resistance. The Ku Klux Klan became active and the likes of burning crosses were planted in King’s garden. Acid was poured on the cars of the boycotters and the homes of King and other leaders were bombed. King was arrested for doing thirty miles per hour in a twenty five miles per hour zone and in February 1956, eighty nine blacks including King were arrested under an old law banning boycotting. Twenty four ministers were also arrested throughout the year for cooperation.

At the same time the NAACP’s lawsuit was advancing through the courts, and on the 13th of November 1956 the Supreme Court in Washington DC ruled that the segregation laws were unconstitutional. The boycott was eventually called off and on the 21st of December 1956, King and his supporters boarded a Greyhound bus for the first time in 381 days. For the first time ever they sat at the front. Their tenacity had earned them victory.

The boycott was classified as a roaring success, not only because the boycotters achieved their aims with regard to Rosa Parks’ specific case, but also because the boycott ended segregation on Montgomery’s buses completely. It also introduced the idea of non-violent protest, an approach take that would later be used by King and others in order to progress the civil rights movement even further. The episode paved the way for the likes of the freedom riders and the lunch counter sit-ins. It also gave rise to institutions like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which would be instrumental in the next steps toward an egalitarian society. Overall it was a massive success that changed the face of American society in a new and unprecedented way. In the words of Joseph Lowery, “the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an era of self-determination”.

Feedback : This is a really great essay in that it answers the question without being repetitive. It shows a good understanding of the material, and you provide good commentary as well, such as making comments on the tenacity of the boycotters. You also make good use of quotations. Your introduction is good as it gives some background as well as laying out the topic of the essay, and your conclusion is strong too as it is more than just a summary of the essay. For future essays that require you to answer several parts, maybe watch out to be clear in what part you’re answering with each paragraph and try to ensure that all sections are given somewhat equal attention. 

Cumulative Mark : while this is a really well-written essay, the fact that there are only 9 paragraphs means that you might not hit the maximum of 60 cumulative marks – you would need at least 6 marks on each paragraph, and while you could achieve this, it would be safest to add an extra paragraph or two just to be certain that you can hit 60. It is possible that this particular essay could achieve 60/60.

Overall Evaluation : for Overall Evaluation, I’d give this around 30/40 as your treatment of the question is very good.

Total : 90/100

• Post author: Martina
• Post published: December 21, 2018
• Post category: #625Lab History / History

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How the Montgomery Bus Boycott Accelerated the Civil Rights Movement

Updated: September 2, 2018 | Original: February 5, 2014

For 382 days, almost the entire African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses, a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Social Movements — Montgomery Bus Boycott

Essays on Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a significant event in history that sparked the civil rights movement in the United States. Writing an essay about the Montgomery Bus Boycott can help you learn about the courage and determination of the people involved and the impact it had on society.

When choosing a topic for your essay about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, consider focusing on specific aspects such as the key figures involved, the impact on civil rights, the role of community activism, or the lasting effects on public transportation. You can also explore the social, political, and economic factors that led to the boycott and its significance in the larger context of the civil rights movement.

For an argumentative essay about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, you can explore topics such as the role of nonviolent resistance, the effectiveness of boycotts as a means of protest, or the relationship between segregation and public transportation. For a cause and effect essay, you could examine the catalysts that led to the boycott and its aftermath, or the long-term consequences on racial segregation and equality. In an opinion essay, you can express your personal views on the impact of the boycott and its relevance in today's society. And for an informative essay, you can delve into the historical background, key events, and the broader implications of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

For a thesis statement on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, you can focus on topics such as the defiance against segregation, the power of grassroots movements, or the role of civil disobedience in creating social change. In the of your essay, you can provide context about the events leading up to the boycott, the key players involved, and the significance of the boycott in challenging racial segregation. In the , you can summarize the key points of your essay and reflect on the lasting impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on civil rights and social justice.

Writing an essay about the Montgomery Bus Boycott allows you to explore a pivotal moment in history and its relevance to contemporary issues. Whether you choose to argue a point, explore causes and effects, express your opinion, or provide information, there are many engaging topics to consider when writing about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

How The Montgomery Bus Boycott Impacted The Civil Rights of The African-american

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Segregation of Bus Passengers and Rosa Parks

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The Role of Black Churches and Community During The Montgomery Bus Boycott

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Rosa Parks: Mother of The Modern-day Civil Rights Movement

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

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Introduction

Throughout history, minority communities and societies, which are considered to be alien or foreign in their present places of residence, have always suffered injustices. This has been facilitated by a feeling of superiority within society perpetrating such injustices. This is the same thing that most African Americans experienced in the U.S. during the better part of the twentieth century. They were compelled to endure a series of humiliation and segregation of all types in the hands of whites. These forms of injustices are normally promoted by such aspects as racism, ethnicity, and divergent ideology which have always separated and divided human beings. The Montgomery Bus Boycott succeeded due to many factors and this paper makes an analysis of these factors. The paper also reveals the major figures or individuals who were behind this boycott and what was their distinctive feature. Moreover, the paper explores how these individuals were distinct in their action capacity and how this made the boycott such an outstanding event in history. In this light, African Americans’ understanding of their role in the prosperity of the bus company in their region was a key factor in the success of the boycott. In short, the essay discusses the success of the boycott of Montgomery’s buses, circumstances surrounding it, and its organizers.

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott that started in 1955 was an outstanding event during the Civil Rights Movement; this is justified because the action of certain individuals of the time, especially Rosa Parks, was a pivotal point in the constant struggle for justice and equality of treatment of human beings. The move was very important because the bus company greatly depended on the African Americans’ contribution to its financial stability owing to the bus fares that they were paying. Therefore, it was unfair to treat blacks as second class citizens and segregate them in the bus seating arrangement because the bus fares that they were subject to were the same as those of whites. In addition, many blacks were using these buses; therefore, their boycott was a well-calculated undertaking to achieve justice.

As a result of injustices against human beings due to their origin, rebellions and demonstrations begin. They mostly go down in history and are recorded as remarkable events that facilitate the acquisition of justice by an individual in his/her society. This is the same case with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After several year of mistreatment, African Americans, who were forced to accept laws which were degrading, had nothing to do but to retaliate against these rules; it was the same thing that Parks did on the bus.

African Americans understood their role in the success of the bus company in their region, and this made them take measures that were extreme to that company. Therefore, it meant that if the company had continued the segregation practices, it would have lost the better part of its clients.

The ability to put forward substantive arguments in favor of the boycott is also another major factor that motivated the success of the boycott. Moreover, the segregated African Americans had a good knowledge of the laws as well as the regulations, therefore, Rosa Parks’ arrest after her refusal to offer her seat to one of the white passengers did not have any form of the constitutional violation because her action did not break the law.

In addition, the presence of people who had background knowledge about what they were going through was also a motivator to the potential success of this boycott. After Parks had been arrested, Nixon doubted whether to tackle the matter legally or not. The ability of Nixon to intervene by paying a bond for the release of Parks gave her and Jo Ann Robinson an opportunity to rally other blacks to avoid boarding those buses till something was done to change the status quo. Prior to this, there had been the arrest of a student named Colvin. His arrest shed light on the need to do something about the segregation situation. It is, therefore, seen as one of the major elements that made this protest begin and reach its peak. Colvin’s action was the demonstration to other blacks that something had to be done urgently about their normal encounters on the buses. This even made Parks take the same initiative to encourage her fellow blacks to join her in action, protest, and participate in the boycott.

Apart from this, Rosa Parks had an intellectual and educational background in racial relationships; she was, therefore, acting based on her knowledge of what should be done if changes occurred in the society where she was living, and was even supported by a white lady named Virginia Foster Durr. This action was also fueled by the fact that she was working for NAACP, an organization which was interested in advocating for the rights and equal treatment of blacks as all other whites. The boycott gave Parks an opportunity to put her ideas into practice and prove that equality could be achieved if people were aggressive enough. The racial discrimination enhanced the need of African Americans to join hands and support abolition of this practice. In this way, the boycott proved successful when none of the blacks appeared to board either of the buses. Martin Luther King`s statement that “the once dormant and quiescent Negro community was now fully awake” illustrates the ability of African Americans to stand out and demonstrate readiness to fight for what they rightfully deserved. It was their willingness that made the boycott a great success.

The Montgomery Improvement Association formed by the Boycott participants developed a taxi plan that helped to pick up blacks from their home places and bring them to work. In such a way, the plan enhanced the degree of success of the boycott. This is because it countered the city official’s regulations on the taxi fares which were charging the same amount as the buses. The members of the association also had a common understanding and stood firm on their decisions owing to democratic involvements. This is evident when some of the members wanted the boycott to end after the one-day event which brought great success. Nonetheless, an election was conducted so as to ascertain the way forward and it appeared that the majority wanted the boycott to continue. Therefore, the boycott was a great success.

The fact that the boycott had its effect not only on the bus company but also on the shops and other businesses in town demonstrated the need to stop the racial segregation on the buses. Due to the boycott, few blacks were going to city centre and this implied that the shops and other establishments could not conduct their business as usual. The boycott caused great losses to shopkeepers who were fearful of losing their livelihoods. It, therefore, urged the city administration to bend the rules and reconsider the demand of blacks. This enhanced the degree to which this action succeeded and became a major historical event.

The formation of the MIA association was also important because it contributed to the success of this boycott by taking legal action against the bus company. This made the courts investigate the legality of segregation. As a result, the practice proved to be unconstitutional, and it became a success to the black community whom the segregation practices affected for a long time. The association also contributed by shunning hoaxes that other whites were presenting on the papers to help the boycott end. Whites informed African Americans that the issues and demands of the boycott had already been addressed by Martin Luther King. However, the claims were refuted by the MIA informing their members that such information had no ground and was false. This made the boycott continue till a better agreement was reached by the courts. As the boycott was proceeding, researchers from Fisk University decided to visit Montgomery to learn more about the movement that had arranged the boycott.

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The initiative taken by different participants in this boycott made a significant contribution to its success. It is apparent from Colvin’s adamancy to leave a white seat that he occupied on the bus, followed by Parks’ detestable action of not giving up her seat to a white person as the seat was reserved for blacks. The involvement of people like Luther King and Nixon had much to do with the success of this boycott because each played an active role in ensuring that their society was motivated to act and stick to what they believed was right. The boycott was a historical event for Africans Americans in their quest to end racial discrimination in the country.

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ASU Honors Rosa Parks by Participating in Montgomery’s Celebration.

ASU Joins in Montgomery’s Celebration of the 66th Anniversary of Rosa Parks’ Historic Stand for Freedom  with a Series of Events.

- The Fourth Annual Rosa Parks Day celebration will be held Dec. 1 and Dec. 4, honoring the mother of the modern Civil Rights Movement.  

By Kenneth Mullinax/ASU.  

Alabama State University joins other community organizations in honoring the "mother" of the modern Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks. The University will participate with others in the  Fourth Annual Rosa Parks Celebration,  which is a series of events held on Dec. 1 and Dec. 4 to remember Parks’ heroic action taken on December 1, 1955, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated Montgomery City bus to protest injustice and inequality.   

"ASU’s involvement in this celebration is in keeping with the University’s history of participation in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” said Dr. Quinton T. Ross, Jr., president of Alabama State University. "Mrs. Parks’ name is synonymous with that pivotal moment in the history of the United States since her actions served as a catalyst to ignite the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott that historians note was the seminal birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Rosa Parks Day helps to keep alive not only her memory, but also the continuing fight for equal justice in this country."  

Ross explained that the  Fourth Annual Rosa Parks Celebration  will take place in Montgomery thanks to the action of the Alabama Legislature, which in 2018, voted to designate Rosa Parks Day on Dec. 1.  

ROSA PARKS DAY EVENTS ON DEC. 1  

On Dec. 1, the celebration begins with the  Rosa Parks Day Unity Breakfast  from 7:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. at the Saint Paul AME Church's Fellowship Hall, which is located at 706 E. Patton Ave. The audience will reflect a diverse group, including elected officials, military, business and community leaders, as well as the general public. The speaker is Troy University's Michael Jackson. 

Later in the evening on Dec. 1, from 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., the  Rosa Parks Day Unity Rally & Walk  will be held .  It begins with an old-fashioned  civil rights rally  at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and concludes with a  Unity Walk  down Dexter Avenue led by Rev. Cromwell Handy (pastor, Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and the director of ASU's National Alumni Association); Rev. Courtney Meadows (pastor, Hutchinson Street Missionary Baptist Church) and Rev. Dr. Agnes Lover (pastor, St. Paul AME Church). They will lead the attendants at the brief rally to the site of Parks’ historic 1955 arrest, which is the present-day location of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum where a prayer vigil will follow.  

At 7 p.m., the activities will conclude with the  Rosa Parks Day Community Convocation -  an awards program - that will be held at Parks' home church, Saint Paul A.M.E. Church. The awards will be presented to those who are recognized for their leadership and commitment to civil rights, voting rights, voter education or overall civic service to the citizens of Montgomery. The event is open to the general public.  

EDUCATIONAL FORUMS HELD ON DEC. 4   

In addition to the Rosa Parks Day activities on Dec. 1, this year’s celebration is expanded to include educational forums that will be held on Dec. 4 at Saint Paul AME Church with special assistance provided by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which is the historic organization that was created after Parks' arrest to provide the leadership for the 1955 - 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott.    

December 4 is a day of educational forums beginning at 10 a.m. and concluding at a program to be held at noon, which include:   

* A 10 a.m. event at Saint Paul AME Church, where participants will engage in workshops on mentoring and community leadership. 

* A noontime community forum that will engage voices on relevant social justice issues facing the Montgomery community. The forum will be patterned similar to a town hall format to discuss the Montgomery community and how average citizenry can unify and lead to make life better. Among those participating will be event moderator Eileen Jones, former political reporter with WSFA12 News; and the panelists include: Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed; Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham; Montgomery County Commission Chairman Elton Dean; and Montgomery Public School System Superintendent Ann Roy Moore.   

A STATEWIDE YOUTH ESSAY COMPETITION  

A statewide youth essay competition is also being held to recognize Parks' heroic feat with cash awards being given to the winners. The contest was launched in October and winners will be recognized and awarded on this day. The topic of the essay was “ Educating, not Indoctrinating: Critical Race Theory, Your Point of View. ”   

REFLECTIONS - MEMORIES FROM PARTICIPANTS & LEADERS OF THE BUS BOYCOTT MOVEMENT   

An event called " Reflections: The First 5 Days, December 1 – 5, 1955 " is being held that will feature participants from the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the civil rights movement offering reflections about the organizational structure, the call to leadership, the cause for social change and other topics of discussion.  

Reflections  will be led and moderated by Dr. Richard Bailey, a noted historian and author. Members of the panel include Civil Rights icon and acclaimed attorney Fred Gray; Doris Crenshaw, a member of Parks' NAACP Youth Leadership Council; Loyd Howard, owner of Howard’s Barber Shop where Parks’ husband Raymond Parks was employed; Chaplain Viola Bradford, a reporter for the Southern Courier Newspaper during the civil rights movement; and Dr. Howard Robinson, Alabama State University historian and archivist.  

Also storytelling about Rosa Parks, E. D. Nixon and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will take place on Dec. 4, by Joseph Trimble with the Alabama State Council of the Arts.  

ALABAMA STATE'S HUGE IMPACT ON THE BUS BOYCOTT & CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY  

ASU's archivist and historian, Dr. Howard Robinson, explained that Alabama State University played a pivotal and impactful role in the birth of the civil rights movement. The University was closely associated with the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, particularly since most of the boycott’s leaders and organizers were ASU alumni, employees or students.  

"Back all the way to the 1950's, Alabama State was called ' The Heart of the Civil Rights Movement ' rightly so, because of the large number of faculty, staff, students and alumni who were among its earliest and hardest proponents," said Robinson. "Many members of the Women’s Political Council, led by ASU professor Jo Ann Robinson, were members of the ASU family and they followed Rosa Parks' example and organized the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott from the basement of ASU's Councill Hall by designing and mimeographing thousands of flyers calling for the Boycott and coming up with a plan to make it happen. Well, their plan, under Robinson's leadership and Parks' deed, did happen; aided by such things as the legal leadership of ASU alumni Fred Gray (ASU 1951) and Rev. Ralph David Abernathy (ASU 1950). They, working in tandem with Dr. King, Rufus Lewis, E.D. Nixon and others, eventually ended segregated buses in Montgomery and contributed to the forthcoming civil rights movement victories, which helped give African-Americans the freedoms they have today.   

"So the connection of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks, Dr. King and others is historically and appropriately linked to Alabama State University. This is why it is important that we all come out and honor their bravery on this remembrance of Mrs. Parks’ action with the events scheduled for Dec. 1 and Dec. 4," Robinson stated.  

News media contact:  Kenneth Mullinax, 334-229-4104.