Nonviolent Protest Against Segregation: The Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. The law said that black people had to sit in the back of the bus while the the white people sat in the front. Bus drivers often referred to black people on the bus as nigger, black cow, or black ape. Blacks had to pay in the front of the bus and they had to get off to go threw the side door to sit in the back.

Rosa Parks and Driver of Montgomery City Bus. Montgomery City Bus observe segregation; 10 seats are reserved for white people, the rest are for colored people. Rosa was asked to move from her bus seat, which was a section for colored people, so that the excess white man can occupy her seat. She did not move and was arrested for violating an Alabama law, wherein black people should relinquish their seat to white people when the bus is full. Supreme Court banned the segregation on public transportation. The Alabama law is unconstitutional.

contended that the refusal to admit the children to the school was a denial of

This civil right movement had a lot to do with “The Help”. The montgomery bus boycott was all about the first large-scale

Rosa Parks was arrested December 1955. Rosa Parks Entered a bus with three other blacks and sat on the fifth row. The fifth row was the first row the black could occupy. After a few stops later the rows in front of them where filled with whites. According to the law at the time blacks and whites could not occupy the same row. There had been one white man left with out a seat. The bus

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a year-long protest, in which African-Americans refused to ride the segregated public buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Lasting approximately 381-days, the Montgomery Bus Boycott started on December 5, 1955, and ended on December 20, 1955 (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2010). During this time period, Jim Crow laws had just become prohibited. However, Jim Crow laws were the way of life in the South, so even though they were prohibited they were still in full action and strength. Jim Crow laws were laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954 (Urofsky, 2015). Racial segregation is the separation of groups of people by race (e.g. using separate drinking fountains) (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2016). The Montgomery Bus Boycott was ignited four days prior, on December 1, 1955, by a courageous African-American woman, Rosa Parks, which refused to give up her seat to a white man (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2010). This event marked the beginning of a huge turning point for the American Civil Rights Movement.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day of work, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus to go home. Being extremely exhausted, Rosa made her way past the first few rows of seats marked “Whites Only”, and sat in the fifth row of the bus, the first available row for black citizens; provided that, no white citizens are without a seat. As the bus proceeded along its route and more individuals entered, the driver noticed that the seats for white citizens were completely full; accordingly, everyone in Rosa’s row was asked to move to the back of the bus,where no seats were available, the other passengers complied but, Rosa refused. ‘"Are you going to stand up?" the driver demanded. Rosa Parks looked straight at him and said: "No." Flustered, and not quite sure what to do, Blake retorted, "Well, I'm going to have you arrested." And Parks, still sitting next to the window, replied softly, "You may do that."’ (Douglas Brinkley's 2000 Rosa Park's biography.) After refusing to move,

After a day of work at the Montgomery fair department store, she boarded the Cleveland, Avenue bus. (Pettinger, 2012) This occurred in December 1, 1955in downtown Montgomery. She along with everyone who rode that bus that day paid there fair. She sat in an empty seat in the middle row which was reserved for colored people. The bus traveled its regular routes, however all the white only seats were filled up. At that point she was demanded by the bus driver to move her seat to the back of the bus so that the white people can sit where she was sitting at. Rosa parks refused to move her seat, consequently she was arrested. She was charged even though she technically had not taken up a “white-only” seat. (Klein,

Rosa Parks was born on February 4,1913 in tuskegee Alabama. She is a African American woman that refused to give up her set a white man on a montgomery bus.So this conflict caused the montgermy bus boycott in Montgermy Alabama.Rosa Parks was sent to jail for not giving up her seat to a white man.She was released from jail in 2003.She was happy to see that Martin Lurther King jr ended the montgermy bus

Rosa Parks’ solitary act of refusing to stand for a white citizen on a bus proved to be the facilitator of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On December 1st 1955 Rosa Parks travelled on a bus after a day of work. At the time there was a system of segregation where the white and black citizens were allocated seating on transport. The black communities were assigned at the back in the “coloured section” while the whites were at the front of all vehicles. On this particular day, Rosa Parks sat in her assigned seat when the bus became full and four white citizens appeared. The bus driver ordered for Rosa to give her seat to the white citizens along with three other black counterparts. Rosa refused to obey this order whilst the other three followed the driver’s orders. She was arrested according to the US archives for “violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses “. The driver Joseph Blake believed that he

            The historical event of Rosa Parks passively protesting against the racial rule of African Americans having to sit in the back of the bus was the confidence booster that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Because the event itself meant so much to the African American community, the image reflects power.

During the Jim Crow era, spanning from 1876 to 1965, the United States was racially segregated both at the federal and state level. The legal legitimacy of segregation was upheld by a Supreme Court ruling in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that determined the concept of “separate but equal” to be constitutional. This institutionalized segregation, and although in theory “separate but equal” (Plessy 163) meant that everyone would receive the same public services, in reality those meant for people of color were of far inferior quality than those for whites. This was especially true in the Southern States, where segregation was enforced de jure i.e. enforced by law, while segregation in the Northern States was mostly on a de facto basis.

According to Reading Like a Historian, the textbook states “King and the others called for a black boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott meant blacks refused to ride the buses. For months, the buses were almost empty because most of the riders had been black. Then, the boycott spread to white businesses in downtown Montgomery.”.During the 1950's they believed that white people were more important so they discriminated but the bus boycott was successful due to the dedication of the black community in which they

Rosa Parks an African American activist who brought national attention to the bus segregation issue, by refusing to give up her seat to a white person and was arrested by the Montgomery Police. Martin Luther King Jr, a new preacher and one of the founders of the Montgomery Improvement Association a black community organization got most of the media credit. The truth was the actions of the black community caused the integration of the buses. The MIA decided that the African American riders should boycott using the Montgomery Bus Line when their proposal to be able to enter through the front and walk to the back was denied by the city. 50,000 thousand black customers for 381 days stopped using the bus line and walked to work and school. The city

On December 1 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to move and give her seat to a white passenger. She was on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama when the incident occured. Her act of non-violence sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a massive protest against segregation on public buses that lasted for 13 months. It finally ended on November 15, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. However the boycott continued until Montgomery received the order to desegregate public buses. Martin Luther King called to end the boycott on December 20, 1956, and boarded an integrated bus the next morning.“The bus boycott demonstrated the