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U.S. Marks 50th Anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks, December 1955 (© AP Images)

By Michael Jay Friedman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The successful African American boycott of segregated Montgomery, Alabama, buses, which began with the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, transformed the civil rights cause into a mass political movement. It demonstrated that African Americans could unite and engage in disciplined political action, and marked the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr.—the indispensable leader who inspired millions, held them to the high moral standard of nonviolent resistance, and built bridges between Americans of all races, creeds and colors.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attorneys, led by such titans as Howard University Law School Vice Dean Charles Hamilton Houston and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, were already at work, gradually dismantling the legal basis for racial segregation. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was their greatest success. This landmark Supreme Court decision declared unconstitutional state statutes that required the segregation of public schools by race. (See related article.)

Even so, obtaining legal decisions was not the same as getting state and local officials to enforce them. Nor would this strategy necessarily secure practical legislation guaranteeing civil equality and voting rights. After Montgomery, the makings of a broad-based civil rights movement would be in place.

ROSA PARKS KEEPS HER SEAT

"The only tired I was," Rosa Parks would later say of the day that changed her life, "was tired of giving in." Parks represented both the older style of African-American leadership and the new.

A high-school graduate in an era when diplomas were hard to come by for blacks in the South, Parks was active in her local NAACP, a registered voter (another privilege held by few Southern blacks) and a respected figure in Montgomery. In the summer of 1955, she attended an interracial leadership conference at the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee institution that trained labor organizers and desegregation advocates. Parks thus knew of efforts to improve the lot of African-Americans and that she was well suited to provide a test case should the occasion arise.

Martin Luther King Jr. is greeted by cheering crowds outside the courthouse. (© AP/WWP)

When Rosa Parks rode home from work on the afternoon of December 1, 1955, she sat in the first row of the “colored section” of seats between the “white” and “black rows.” When the white seats filled, the driver required Parks to give up her seat when another white boarded the bus. Parks refused, and was thereupon arrested, jailed, and ultimately fined $10, plus $4 in court costs. Parks was 42 years old; she had crossed the line into direct political action.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. GAINS PROMINENCE

An outraged black community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to organize a boycott of the city bus system. Partly to forestall rivalries among local community leaders, citizens turned to a recent arrival to Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

In his first speech to MIA, King told the group: “We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

Under King’s leadership, boycotters organized carpools, while black taxi drivers charged boycotters the same fare --10 cents -- they would have paid on the bus. By auto, by horse-and-buggy and even simply by walking, direct, nonviolent political action forced the city to pay a heavy economic price for its segregationist ways.

It also made a national figure of King, whose powerful presence and unsurpassed oratorical skills drew publicity for the movement and attracted support from sympathetic whites, especially those in the North. Even after his house was attacked, and King himself, along with over 100 boycotters, was arrested for “hindering a bus,” his continued grace and adherence to nonviolent tactics earned respect for the movement, discredited the segregationists of Montgomery, and launched King to national prominence as a civil rights champion.

THE LEGAL CHALLENGE

The desegregation of the Montgomery bus system required a combination of Rosa Parks’ personal initiative and bravery, King’s political leadership and, in the end, an NAACP-style legal effort. Even as the boycotters braved segregationist opposition, desegregationist attorneys cited the precedent of Brown v. Board of Education as they challenged the Montgomery bus ordinance in the courts.

In November 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the city’s final appeal, and the segregation of Montgomery buses ended, as did the boycott.

As civil rights attorneys scored a victory over legal segregation, the Montgomery bus boycott made a hero of Rosa Parks, a leader of King, and political actors of thousands of previously disenfranchised African-Americans. Thus strengthened, the civil rights movement—sparked by a woman “tired of giving in,”—would, after much more struggle, bequeath to us all the legislative triumphs of the 1960s.

For additional information on the U.S. civil rights movement, see African-American Rights.

For more information on Rosa Parks, who died October 24 at the age of 92, see related article.

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