Civil Rights Era
Section 3
Montgomery Bus Boycott
In an atmosphere of racial terror where the injustice of the political system was always blatant, black activists throughout the South were struggling against the inequality of segregation. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man while riding on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Although the media portrayed Parks as a tired woman without ties to a larger freedom struggle, she was, in fact, a seasoned activist who had been a Youth leader in the NAACP and had received training in activism at the Highlander Center. Moreover, the stand Parks took that day was part of a long planned protest led by E. D. Nixon, a local community and Pullman Car Porter union leader, and the Women’s Political Council led by Jo Ann Robinson.
Rosa Parks being interviewed with Pullman Porter union leader E. D. Nixon outside a Montgomery courthouse, March 19, 1956.
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Over a year earlier, the group had started planning a means through which to address segregation within the city. After deciding to attack the city’s outrageous segregation on public transportation, where black patrons were forced to sit in the back of the bus or stand when a white patron had no seat, they devised a test case to see how the city would respond. After Mrs. Parks was arrested that December 1, 1955, an outraged Nixon urged the African American community to stage a one-day boycott of the Montgomery buses. On Monday, December 5, over 95 percent of all blacks refused to ride the buses. That night 6,000 black people gathered at Montgomery’s Holt Street Baptist Church and reached a consensus to continue the nonviolent protest indefinitely.
Churches played a key role in organizing the boycott. Here, Martin Luther King Jr. is encouraging churchgoers to continue the boycott. 1956.
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Thousands of black commuters are shown walking long distances to work instead of riding the buses during the Montgomery bus boycott. 1956.
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A black coalition of ministers and community members, the Montgomery Improvement Association, was created. At Nixon’s suggestion, the members selected a young, little known Baptist minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as their chief spokesperson. An estimated 50,000 African Americans boycotted the Montgomery buses during the year-long protest until, on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the boycott and struck down the city’s segregation ordinance for public transportation. The modern black freedom movement had achieved a decisive victory.
Related Resources
Martin Luther King Jr. is interviewed by a reporter at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott c. December 1955
Film footage showing empty buses and black commuters piling into cars during the Montgomery bus boycott (no sound)
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a speech, on behalf of the MIA, announcing the Supreme Court's decision ending segregated busing, Nov. 1956
"If You Miss Me from the Back of the Bus." As the Civil Rights Movement made gains throughout the South in desegregating public transportation and services, this song became a testament to overcoming the entrenched segregation system
Play audio | Download mp3 file (2.9 MB)
Martin Luther King Jr. honors Rosa Parks at a church in 1966
"Negroes' Boycott Cripples Bus Line," New York Times, January 8, 1956
"Boycott Scores Hit; Montgomery 'Gets Tough,'" The Chicago Defender, February 4, 1956, p 1
Jo Ann Robinson, Letter to W.J. Gayle [Mayor of Montgomery, Ala], May 21, 1954, reprinted in David J. Garrow (ed.), The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Made it: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Pr, 1987