Alabama Bus Boycott : A Civil Association For The Advancement Of Colored People

A brief summary about A Stride Toward Freedom: It gives a timeline of events ranging from Dr. King’s arrival to Montgomery, a journey that covers the bus boycotts through December 1, 1955 – December 21, 1956 of the South and then concludes with asking the important question located in the last chapter, “Where Do We Go From Here?” It focuses on MLK’s perspective of the people, events, and bus boycott procedures. A Stride Toward Freedom touches on not only a huge part of African American/Negro history but also American history with one of the first applications of nonviolent successful protest

The Pain and the Promise by Glenda Alice Rabby gives an account of the long, hard struggles blacks had to endure to achieve equality among whites in Tallahassee and throughout Florida. A lot of people had the misconception that Florida wasn’t like its neighboring Southern states. Rabby proves throughout the book that those were just mere misconceptions and in fact, Florida was equally resistant to change as other states below the Mason Dixon line. Tallahassee, being the state’s capitol, was going to be the city that set the framework for the entire state during the modern civil rights movement if

Following, on May 4, 1961, a mixed group of 13 African Americans and white civil rights activist led the Freedom Rides (Freedom Rides?). Similar, to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides traveled to various cities in the south to protest against segregation of the bus terminals. History.com staff concurs “the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American South to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals.” The purpose of the freedom riders was to openly disobey the Jim Crow laws in the south in a nonviolent fashion. This was a dangerous journey, many of these people were beaten, arrested, and even the buses were destroyed. Yet, they persevered (“Freedom Riders: The Nashville Connection”). History.com staff, adds “The Freedom Riders, were recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a U.S. civil rights group, they departed from Washington D.C., and attempted to integrate facilities at bus terminals along the way in the Deep South.” African Americans would try to use the “whites only” bathrooms and counters, which attracted attention and violence (Freedom Rides). According to the history.com staff due to the efforts of the Freedom Rides, “in September 1961, the interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in bus and train nationwide.” The

On the morning of parks trial buses rumbled nearly empty through the streets of Montgomery. By the next morning the council led by Jo Ann Robinson had printed 52,000 fliers asking, Montgomery blacks to stay off the buses. It was an important and an accepted rule that whites sit in the front and the African American riders had to sit in the back of all buses. A group of about 50 African American leaders and one white minister, Robert Graetz, gathered in the basement of Dr. King?s church to endorse the boycott and begin planning a massive rally.

Since the Supreme Court case of Plessy Vs Ferguson way back in 1892, which ruled the separation of blacks and whites constitutional as long as all public facilities provided were “separate but equal,” the United States had been segregated. As with all other public facilities at the time, the busses in Montgomery Alabama were also subject to this segregation, and it wasn’t until 1956 with the beginning of what became to be known as the “Montgomery Bus

During the freedom rides, African Americans would refuse to ride in black designated seats on public transportation. The creation of the Freedom Rides was one of the main movements of the CORE civil rights groups. One of the leaders, James Farmer, developed the type protest. The bus would travel down from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana in an almost transcontinental nonviolent-protest. Farmers plan was imitated the Journey for Reconciliation. In May of 1961, an interracial collection of people boarded two buses from Washington to travel southward in protest of segregation. Known as the Greyhound and Trailways, the buses traveled peacefully throughout the country until they entered South Carolina. White racists outside of Rock Hill attacked the voyageurs. The ride became increasingly insecure the further south they traveled. A mob firebombed and attacked the members of the Greyhound bus in Anniston and another assaulted the Trailways’ riders in Birmingham. Although CORE discontinued the rides, many other riders assembled due to outrage over the violence displayed. A new wave of activists directed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including John Lewis, flooded Alabama where once again they were attacked in Montgomery. The significance of this the second wave of riders was that it forced the executive branch to act in response to the violence. Kennedy directed the Nation Guard to escort the riders their next destination of Mississippi. Kennedy’s brother Robert has the voyagers arrested for violating legislation set by pro-segregation officials in Mississippi and to prevent any further violence. James Farmer continued to encourage this type of protest and by the end of the season over 300 advocates had chose jail over fines to “dramatize” the issue. JFK’s forced recognition of the issues

Despite the great efforts put forth during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 in which the black community and its supporters refused to use public transportation, transport segregation still remained in some southern states. As a result

The up to date dying of Rosa Parks refocused countrywide attention on one of the crucial beloved figures of the civil rights movement. However without the heroism of hundreds of unsung grass-roots activists, the action would not ever have complete what it did. In "Freedom Riders," Raymond Arsenault, a professor of history at the university of South Florida, rescues from obscurity the guys and women who, at high-quality individual threat, rode public buses into the South as a way to venture segregation in interstate travel. Drawing on individual papers, F.B.I. Documents and interviews with more than 200 contributors within the rides, Arsenault brings vividly to life a defining moment in modern American history.

The Civil Rights Movement was a horrible time for blacks in America during the Civil Rights period of time. During the Civil Rights period, segregation was forced toward the blacks’. In their powerful book of Civil Rights era testimony, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s, Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer including firsthand accounts describing the Freedom Riders. As Freedom Riders began to ride the busses the whites protested at the Montgomery bus station. Freedom Riders needed to find ways to stop the protesters and to have nonviolent protests. Some of their ways to stop protesters was to spread the message of nonviolent protests. Another method is to just let them hurt the

Ralph David Abernathy who was one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s close colleagues and an influential member in the Civil Rights Movement. Not only does the book describe the story of Abernathy but it also conveys a sense of how the Civil Rights Movement devised its strategy and direction. The book gives a personal account of Abernathy’s rural farming background in Alabama and his service in World War II. Abernathy also covers topics ranging from the montgomery bus boycott to King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the tireless effort of King and the SCLC to try and get Carl Stokes elected as the first African American mayor of a major city.

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. By Raymond Arsenault New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. In the book, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, historian Raymond Arsenault, writes about the six month between the spring and summer of 1961 where four hundred and fifty men and women rode segregated buses in the south. Their mission was to defy the non-enforcement of the Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregated public buses were unconstitutional, and how majority of white southerners did not observe these laws.

In politics, civil rights leaders sought to effectively mobilize black voters and also oppose the gerrymandering of political districts that decreased the power of the black vote. (Tuck, 2004) The Congress of Racial Equality used a nonviolent and direct-action approach to politics, endorsing Freedom Rides to challenge segregated transportation and sit-ins in the south to protest discrimination. (Baldwin, 2011) In revolt to the discrimination within the public transportation systems, the black church and social groups organized a one-day boycott in where all black would avoid using busses and public transportation to show the disapproval of actions and hatred being taken towards them all because of their color.

Farmer, a young black boy who lived in South Mississippi, had lived in a very segregated area, so segregated to the point were he could not even buy himself a coke can at the local drug store, while the young white boy could. Farmer had felt it was to unfair, so in return, Farmer had started a campaign called, “Freedom Rides.” Freedom rides explained by Farmer is, “The plan was to have interracial groups riding Greyhound and Trailways buses, with the blacks in front and the whites in back, both refusing to move.” (King, Casey and Linda Barrett Osborne Pg. 254) As we can see, with Freedom Rides in play, is a campaign towards gaining rights. Making this decision had aroused much hate towards Farmer. In the text it states how he had received death threats from the KKK and more, “In fact, I was shot at by the Klan-----the Ku Klux Klan.” (King, Casey and Linda Barrett Osborne Pg. 254) This shows many people felt his decision was not right and many people thought he did not have the right to do that. But although this was the case, Farmer had not let this get to him. From the text it talks about how Farmer was not phased by the hate at all, Bernard Jarvis had asked whether he was phased by what happened, Farmer responded with, “No. Students from the student nonviolent coordinating

Following the seemingly successful 1950’s Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, a protest for segregation where African Americans under the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) refused to ride Alabama buses, ending after 381 days when the Supreme Court ordered Alabama to integrate its bus systems, the state figuratively dragged its heels in changing its transit. In fact, ten years later when the Supreme Court ruled segregated buses unconstitutional nationwide, yet southern states still refused to integrate their buses, despite attending college for a ministerial career and knowing the likelihood that the southerners would violently resist, James L. Farmer Jr. , a Gandhi-influenced activist, saw the opportunity to hold these states accountable. To do so, Farmer, organizing what he came to call “Freedom Rides”, set out to train 12 volunteers along with himself in nonviolent protest to prepare the riders to ride through those stubborn states, in turn desegregating them . While acquiring his degree from Howard University, the college where he decided to co-found and Direct the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Farmer studied Gandhi, this strongly influencing the activist to approach the protest peacefully . Choosing to model the Freedom Rides after a similar bus protest, Farmer followed Bayard Rustin’s “Journey of Reconciliation”; however, unlike Rustin, Farmer emphasized thoroughly training his riders in a three-day workshop that focused on

The Freedom Riders were a racially mixed group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, who challenged the south’s segregation laws in 1961. Thirteen riders left Washington DC, hoping to bring attention to the segregation laws in the south, and force federal action. The plan was to spend two weeks riding the public bus system from Washington, DC to New Orleans, Louisiana. At each stop, the riders would purposefully violate the segregation laws of the deep south by entering the “all white” facilities, to see if the African-American riders would be served. The group was committed to a completely non-violent stand, being trained in various responses, such as not making eye-contact with antagonizers.