THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT:
A MODEL FOR HISTORICAL THINKING IN EDUCATION
A Project
Presented to the faculty of the Department of History
California State University, Sacramento
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
History
by
Monica Rae French
SPRING
2012
THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT:
A MODEL FOR HISTORICAL THINKING IN EDUCATION
A Project
by
Monica Rae French
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Chloe Burke
__________________________________, Second Reader
Donald Azevada
____________________________
Date
ii
Student: Monica Rae French
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the project.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
Mona Siegel
Department of History
iii
___________________
Date
Abstract
of
THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT:
A MODEL FOR HISTORICAL THINKING IN EDUCATION
by
Monica Rae French
Statement of Problem
The Women’s Political Council fought bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama,
prior to the 1955 bus boycott but these women are often neglected in teaching about the
civil rights movement. Women such as Jo Ann Robinson, who led the Women’s Political
Council in Montgomery in the 1950s, as well as the women involved in Browder v.
Gayle, that ultimately declared bus segregation to be unconstitutional, are important to
understanding the bus boycott in its complexity. These women were tireless innovators
who blazed the trail for the boycott to be successful. Their often forgotten achievements
are important in understanding the role of women in the boycott and the boycott itself.
Highlighting the complex and underlying causes of the boycott and women’s role in the
boycott teaches students that the boycott did not “just happen.” It was the result of
gendered, racial and economic tensions gradually brought to light by people willing to
bravely challenge the status quo. Emphasizing primary source investigation, this project
proposes 11th grade history curriculum on the bus boycott and the Women’s Political
iv
Council that serves as a model for incorporating historical thinking in history educators’
classrooms.
Sources of Data
Primary source material used in this project to demonstrate the origins and
strategies of the WPC, include memoirs and oral histories of women “trailblazers” such
as Jo Ann Robinson, Mary Fair Burks and Rosa Parks; voting records, bus passenger
population, and voting and census records; legal documents such as laws specific to bus
segregation and the Browder v. Gayle Supreme Court. Finally, history pedagogy
references include educational studies produced by Sam Wineburg.
Conclusions Reached
The Women’s Political Council was the catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott.
The black female professors and professionals in Montgomery were the original
trailblazers of the civil rights movement. The Montgomery bus boycott and the WPC
provide an excellent model for teaching a complex civil rights event, encouraging critical
thinking, and historical thinking skills
_______________________, Committee Chair
Chloe Burke
_______________________
Date
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Once again, to Nolan.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ vi
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION: TEACHING THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS
…MOVEMENT ................................................................................................................. 1
Teaching the Civil Rights Movement ............................................................................. 4
Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott ......................................................................... 7
2. RECOGNIZING THE WOMEN TRAILBLAZERS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
…MOVEMENT ............................................................................................................... 12
3. PREPARING FOR THE REVOLUTION: WPC’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST BUS
…SEGREGATION IN MONTGOMERY ....................................................................... 26
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 26
Women’s Political Council ........................................................................................... 29
Fighting Montgomery’s Segregated Bus System ......................................................... 34
The Search for a Model Case ........................................................................................ 42
The Boycott Begins....................................................................................................... 48
The Browder Case......................................................................................................... 53
4. TEACHING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ...................................................... 59
Historical Thinking ....................................................................................................... 59
vii
Teaching with Historical Documents and Images ........................................................ 60
Web-Based Historical Research ................................................................................... 67
Performance Assessments ............................................................................................. 70
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 73
Appendix A. Teaching Application .................................................................................. 75
Forward ......................................................................................................................... 75
Model Lesson Plans ...................................................................................................... 77
Web Quest ................................................................................................................. 77
Activities/Lessons for Images ................................................................................... 79
Document Strategies/Activities ................................................................................ 81
Montgomery Bus Boycott PowerPoint Presentation ................................................ 83
Document Based Question ........................................................................................ 86
DBQ Teachers Guide ................................................................................................ 91
DBQ Student Support ............................................................................................... 93
Museum Project ........................................................................................................ 95
Montgomery Bus Boycott: Background Essay ....................................................... 100
Historical Reference (People) ................................................................................. 102
Historical Reference (Terms) .................................................................................. 106
Historical Analysis Tools ............................................................................................ 109
Primary and Secondary Sources ............................................................................. 109
viii
Three Levels of Questioning ................................................................................... 110
SOAPS .................................................................................................................... 111
Document Analysis Worksheet............................................................................... 112
Photo Analysis Worksheet ...................................................................................... 113
Cartoon Analysis Worksheet .................................................................................. 114
Artifact Analysis Worksheet ................................................................................... 115
Map Analysis Worksheet ........................................................................................ 116
Historical Primary Sources: Photographs, Documents, Interviews ............................ 117
Document Guiding Questions ................................................................................. 117
Interview Guiding Questions .................................................................................. 117
Images .................................................................................................................... 118
Documents .............................................................................................................. 127
Interviews ................................................................................................................ 147
Claudette Colvin ................................................................................................. 147
Rosa Parks ........................................................................................................... 150
Fred Gray Sr. ....................................................................................................... 154
Jo Ann Robinson ................................................................................................. 156
Additional Montgomery Bus Boycott Web Sources .................................................. 160
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 161
ix
1
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION: TEACHING THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
History is the most important subject in the development of a civically minded
citizen. It has the ability to bring diverse individuals together, teach about mistakes of
the past, and engage individuals in the important critical thinking process of cause and
effect. Because of history’s power, people have manipulated the subject to create
stereotypes, biases, and false information. When Woodrow Wilson, once faculty at
Princeton University, proclaimed the Klan-loving Birth of a Nation was “writing history
with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true” he proved how
sometimes history is really just a story. Yet, Wilson’s message, as well as the film can
serve as an important history lesson simply by posing the question “why?” to the
students. “Why?” is the most important question in teaching historical thinking and
preparing students to becoming active citizens. “Why?” challenges the students to think
about cause and effect in the historical event at hand, and to ask “why” in their civic
lives.
History teachers have the difficult task of teaching, and having students memorize
a variety of information for the purpose of standardize testing. This in itself is a task that
most teachers and students find difficult. Because of that, many teachers and students
resort to the “kill and drill” method involving daily Power Points and routine note taking,
culminating in a multiple choice test at the end of the week. Commonly, after analyzing
the test results, if the teacher feels that the students did not grasp the information they
2
repeat the process, with new information. This is the task of the history teacher in
today’s society of API test score pressure and the continued anxiety oozing from
administration offices to improve test scores.
Memorization is an important skill for students to learn; however, it should not be
the chief skill learned in a history class. Students need to learn how to think historically.
While mastering information allows students to structure opinions and form an argument,
it does not teach them how to think. In order to demonstrate a variety of levels of
thinking, in 1956 Benjamin Bloom developed “Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning.” This
pyramid-shaped classification table places the greatest amount of emphasis on
“Knowledge” as foundational for learning. Knowledge preceeds comprehension,
application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Many educators, and their administrators
who evaluate them, argue that the ultimate goal of the student should be evaluation.
However, Sam Wineburg, and one of his doctoral students at Stanford, question Bloom’s
taxonomy placement of knowledge at the bottom and evaluation at the top of the
pyramid.1 After giving a primary document to a variety of successful Advanced
Placement United States history students, Wineburg and his associate determined what
was lacking in history education was an understanding of context. Most of the students
took an 1892 document about memorializing Columbus Day, placed it in a modern
context, and proceeded to draw conclusions based on perceptions of Christopher
Columbus in present day. They drew on their background knowledge about the famous
Sam Wineburg and Jack Schneider, “Was Bloom’s Taxonomy Pointed in the Wrong Direction?” Kappan
91, no. 4, December 20009/January 2010, 56-61.
1
3
explorer and formed an opinion about. The students were not able to tackle the document
from the point of view of the time when the document was created. The students did not
ask “why” that document was created in 1892, or what was going on at that time to
motivate President Benjamin Harrison to proclaim the first Columbus Day. These
students did what is typical of most high school history students—they answered
questions without asking them first, and gave answers based in present-day knowledge
without contextual analysis. Teachers train students to use documents to answer a
question and not to pose further questions. However, as Wineburg’s study proved,
“knowledge possessed does not automatically mean knowledge deployed.”2
The Department of Education has gradually come to the conclusion that history
education should not be completely measured and structured around the memorization of
facts. Because of this, since 2010 California, as well as many other states, have
encouraged the development of common core standards—standards not just focused on
historical facts, but based in the use of skills of historical reading and analysis. These
standards emphasize the ability to analyze historical discourse (RH 11-12.4), evaluate
authors’ differing points of view for the same historical event (RH 11-12.6), integrate and
evaluate multiple sources of information to answer an historical question (RH 11-12.7)
and integrate information from diverse sources, discerning discrepancies form the various
sources (RH 11-12.9).3 California plans to adopt these nation-wide standards by the
2014-2015 school year to accompany revised content-based standards. These common
“Was Bloom’s Taxonomy Pointed in the Wrong Direction?” 60.
“English, Language-Arts Standards: History/Social Studies Grades 11-12.” Common Core State
Standards Initiative (accessed 13 March 2012) <http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/englishlanguage-arts-standards/history-social-studies/grades-11-12/>
2
3
4
core standards illustrate the new wave in history education. History content standards in
their stand-alone form promote learning history as the memorization of facts. However,
being able to interpret data, recognize bias, and analyze why and how sources differ are
skills that transcend the history discipline and support a student’s civic life, and future
career in a variety of disciplines.
An important way to teach students how to create historical questions is to present
them with primary documents while reinforcing basic historical knowledge. When
students learn to think about a document, person, or event in its historical context not
only will students more aptly memorize the information for standardized tests as
demanded by state and federal governments, they acquire critical thinking skills that they
can transfer into other scholastic subjects and their lives.
Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
Content Standard 11.10 for United States History and Geography education
California public schools for grade eleven reads, “Students will analyze the development
of federal civil rights and voting rights.” The standards break down further to read
“11.10.4: Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin
Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks) . . .”4
While California History Standards allow for teachers to include the histories of other
significant individuals, it is abundantly clear that the individuals listed must be taught in
“Grade Eleven United States History and Geography: Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century”
History-Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools,
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf, 59. Accessed March 30, 2012.
4
5
preparation for the California Standards Test (CST) in Social Science administered every
spring. Despite some pedagogical freedom for history teachers, when examining the civil
rights movement many teachers mainly focus on the individuals listed in the standards, or
rely on the few expanded upon in the textbook. However, by teaching students about
everyday people who influenced and shaped the movement, they will be able to
understand the individuals listed in the standards more effectively. It is the goal of this
thesis project is to help teachers prepare students for the CST through standard 11.10 by
increasing a student’s ability to think historically through primary sources, teach modernday researching skills and expand both student and teacher knowledge of significant,
although underrepresented, individuals of the civil rights movement.
In today’s content standards, there is an emphasis on students learning the history
of the modern African-American civil rights movement. Because of this emphasis, and
the creation of content-based standards, American students have a greater knowledge of
key civil rights activists than in previous generations. Between June 2005 and August
2006 Sam Wineburg and assistant professor of education at the University of Maryland
Chauncey Monte-Sano posed an important question to American high school students.5
Curious about how changes in curriculum materials influenced popular historical
consciousness, the two scholars asked “Who is a ‘famous’ American?” Students were
allowed to choose individuals from Columbus to present day, but not presidents or their
wives. With the surveys returned, Wineburg and Monte-Sano discovered that the top
Chauncey Monte-Sano and Sam Wineburg, “Famous Americans: The Changing Pantheon of American
Heroes.” Journal of American History (2008), 1188.
5
6
three names were all African American: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet
Tubman. These results reflect developments in history curriculum since the 1960s.
In 1926 Carter Woodson the founder of the Journal of Negro History designated
the week in February that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick
Douglass as “Negro History Week.” 6 That year there were parades and educational
events; however, it was not until the civil rights movement of the 1960s that white
America noticed the lack of African American history in schools and research.7
Researchers at Smith College’s Center for Study of Social and Political Changed
discovered that Dred Scott was the only African American figure mentioned multiple
times in high school textbooks.8 African Americans, as well as women and Native
Americans were virtually ignored. Amazed at these findings, Congress investigated the
bias in textbooks and encouraged states to pass laws prohibiting prejudicial treatment of
minorities and that instructional material, lesson plans, units, and books include a
“balanced portrayal of ethnic groups.”9 While teachers clamored for materials for their
classroom, a new wave of social historians widened the historical scope to include
diverse studies of African Americans, as well as women and workers.
Although some historians, teachers and students were pleased with the new
deluge of materials on African American history, the purpose of introducing new
materials was somewhat controversial. Both white and black people in education debated
Larry Cuban “Not ‘Whether?’ But ‘Why? and How?’—Instructional Materials on the Negro in the Public
Schools The Journal of Negro Education , Vol. 36, No. 4 (Autumn, 1967), 434.
7
Famous Americans: The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes,” 1186.
8
“Famous Americans: The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes,” 1187.
Frances FitzGerald,
9
Cuban, 434.
6
7
about who and what to teach, as well as what goals there should be. In 1967 The Journal
of Negro Education concluded that the purpose of teaching African American history in
school was to offer white and black students a more balanced picture of the American
past while removing misinformation and stereotypes as well as improving interracial
relationships and improving the self esteem of the black student.10 Teaching African
American history in this way, however, offers a limited perspective of African American
history, by teaching only “heroes” and neglecting the broader meaning of the African
American experience throughout American history.
The Wineburg and Monte-Sano study illustrates that forty years later the concerns
raised in the Journal of Negro Education continue to ring true—students are familiar with
African Americans in American history, but only those few heroes who are portrayed “in
a realistically positive light.”11
Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott has been studied from a variety of points of view.
Scholars have eagerly uncovered the boycott from a religious perspective by examining
the role of reverends such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy who are
particularly well represented in popular histories. These histories emphasize the
importance local churches played in launching and organizing the boycott and ultimately
10
11
Cuban, 434.
Cuban, 435.
8
its success.12 In the traditional narrative, mass meetings and donations collected through
the church helped to unify the African American population of Montgomery, leading to a
successful boycott and an overturning of bus segregation laws. The details of the boycott
are also presented from a legal perspective. Prominent African American NAACP
chapter president E. D. Nixon is popularly cast as the hero in this history. He worked
tirelessly with white politicians, leaders in the African American community, and the
Women’s Political Council (WPC) to find the right case to change bus segregation laws.
The religious and the legal perspectives often overlap as Nixon sought the approval from
Montgomery congregations prior to changing segregation legislation.
Until recently, civil rights historiography has underemphasized the role women
played in creating and charting the course of the Montgomery bus boycott, and in the
history classroom women are represented only by Rosa Parks. This project reveals that
politically minded women united in the Women’s Political Council to fight segregation
prior to the 1955 boycott, and argues that their organizational actions were important to
achieving success during the boycott. This thesis offers a history of the Montgomery bus
boycott that places women at the center. Key questions addressed include: Why was the
WPC created? What were their goals? How did the WPC influence the bus boycott, the
NACCP, and SCLC? To what extent was the boycott successful because of WPC
efforts? How did the WPC shape the Browder v. Gayle (1956) case?
12
See Lawrence D. Reddick, Crusader without Violence: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New
York, 1959); Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago:
1968); David L. Lewis, King: A Biography (Urbana, Ill., 1978), Ira Zepp, The Social Vision of Martin
Luther King, Jr. (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1989).
9
Studies of the Montgomery bus boycott began almost as soon as the boycott
ended. One of the first was penned by King himself, who emphasized the role of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the success of the boycott. Shortly after
King’s Stride Toward Freedom, other SCLC staff members, notably Charles Fager and
Ralph Smeltzer reported their accounts on the boycott emphasizing the role of the
church.13 Social historian Doug McAdam argues that the boycott arose when southern
blacks mobilized their own organizational resources rather than waiting for legislation.
This project adopts a similar approach by focusing on an all-black organization, the
Women’s Political Council (WPC), and its efforts to protest Montgomery’s bus laws in
the years prior to the 1955 boycott, and significantly its recognition of the need to unify a
socially, economically, and politically divided black community uneasy with disrupting
the status quo. This project differs from historians such as Aldon Morris who argues the
boycott gained merit from local organizational centers, but emphasizes the role of the
church in creating movement centers.14 David Garrow remains the foremost expert on
the boycott, examining legal, religious, and social dimensions of the boycott.15 He is one
of the first historians, without a first hand experience of the boycott, to discuss the WPC.
However, until recently, other historians have only lightly mentioned the WPC or the role
of women in the boycott.
Prior to Rosa Parks, women in Montgomery from a variety of socio-economic
classes, and levels of education protested bus segregation laws by refusing to give up
13
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010)
Aldon Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 1986)
15
The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York:
Carlson Publishing, 1989).
14
10
their seats. The Women’s Political Council was an all-female African American political
group organized and led by college professors who worked tirelessly to address the
injustices experienced by black individuals (predominantly women) who rode the buses
everyday. The WPC sought the legal advice of E. D. Nixon, the president of the
Montgomery chapter of the NACCP, and religious advice from Reverend Ralph
Abernathy. However, prior to the arrest of Rosa Parks, many legal, religious, black
business and community organizations refused to help the WPC in their pursuit of fair
bus legislation. Both Nixon and Abernathy claimed that it was not the right time; that the
city was not ready; and that other women who resisted segregation were not good “test
cases” for change through the legal system. The WPC, however, never gave up and they
were prepared to launch a boycott when Parks refused to give up her seat. They sent
demands to bus drivers, politicians and newspapers, promising that if segregated seating
on the city busses did not end, there would be economic consequences for the city and the
transportation system. These letters challenged the status quote but were always signed,
“Respectfully yours.” Because of their prior preparation, the WPC was able to quickly
mimeograph notices of a bus boycott the night Parks was arrested and delivers these to
black schools, churches, and places of business. This project argues that the WPC was
the organizational machine behind the efforts in Montgomery to end segregation in public
facilities. Although they were as important as Martin Luther King, Jr. to the success of
the boycott, the WPC remains dramatically underrepresented in historical scholarship on
the subject and in classroom teaching.
11
Answering the question “why” will not only encourage the students to think
historically, it will prepare them to be civically-minded citizens in today’s world, and will
ultimately result in the students understanding, not just memorizing, basic knowledge for
the CST. This project aims to use the Montgomery bus boycott as a model for engaging
students in historical thinking. Chapter Two, “Recognizing the Women Trailblazers of
the Civil Rights Movement” is a brief historiography of studies of women in the modern
African American civil rights movement. The focus is chiefly on how specific female
activists such as Daisy Bates, Jo Ann Robinson and Rosa Parks reflected on their
involvement in the movement. Chapter Three, “Preparing for the Revolution: WPC’s
Campaign against Bus Segregation in Montgomery,” analyzes the role the Women’s
Political Council’s played in organizing the boycott. Special attention is paid to why the
WPC formed, how they reached the goal of ending bus segregation and their influence on
organizing the black community in preparation for a city-wide boycott. Chapter Four,
“Teaching the Civil Rights Movement,” examines methods of teaching historical thinking
skills, why this approach is important, and how it can be accomplished through model
lesson plans on the Montgomery bus boycott and the WPC. The Appendix presents a
number of lessons, tools and activities that are aimed at teaching students to think
historically. In these classroom materials, students learn to analyze history by thinking
about people and events in a specific historical context. The Appendix offers a
comprehensive unit on the Montgomery bus boycott, as a model to encourage the sort of
historical depth that is needed in society today, as well as connect with the Common Core
Standards.
12
CHAPTER TWO
RECOGNIZING THE WOMEN TRAILBLAZERS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
The civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century influenced activists across
the United States and around the world for over fifty years. African Americans’ fight to
end segregation and ensure equal rights among its citizens was fought in very diverse
ways, in a variety of settings. Groups such as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched campaigns in the legal world.
Because they believed the Constitution of the United States was on their side, they took
their battles to the courtroom. Thurgood Marshall led the team that proved the
effectiveness of this strategy in the landmark Supreme Court Brown v. Board of
Education decision in 1954 that ended racial segregation in schools. Other groups, such
as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) believed
that non-violent direct action and church-based leadership should be at the center of the
movement. Beginning with the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, King, and the
Reverends Abernathy and Shuttlesworth used this method to lead protest marches and
rallies for racial equality across the country from Selma, Alabama to Washington, D.C.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, influenced by an increase of feminist studies and
stemming from the new social history of the 1960s, many civil rights historians began to
examine the experiences and role of women in the movement. These histories emphasize
the significant participation of women as organizers. One of the first to advance this
argument was Mary Fair Burks, the founder of the Women’s Political Council in
13
Montgomery, Alabama. Reflecting on the role of women in 1955 bus boycott, Burks
argues that black women in the civil rights movement were “trailblazers,” which she
defines as a pioneer in a field of endeavor, in distinction to the torchbearer who “follows
the trailblazer, imparting tested knowledge or truth provided originally by the pioneer in
its rudimentary form.”16 Burks argues that many African American women were
trailblazers, and many African American men were torchbearers. Black women all over
the United States from Reconstruction through the civil rights movement blazed a path to
equality. Many black female activists, however, remained anonymous and invisible to
history. Because of their experience of the triple bind of oppression—racism, sexism and
classism – black women experienced subjugation and the movement differently than
black men. In contrast with male activists who led the national organizations, or
participated as lawyers, women often started local, grassroots movements, and protested
consumer inequality.
Beginning with studies published in the1950s by movement participants, through
to contemporary scholarship, civil rights historiography is characterized by a diversity of
approaches to the subject as scholars have emphasized the importance of leaders of the
movement; civil rights legislation; grassroots campaigns; local movements; religious
influences; and gendered perspectives. Scholars of the 1970s and 1980s focused on
leaders and events that led to a national political impact.17 These scholars focused on the
Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Black Women in United
States History (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 71.
17
Carl M. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York, 1977); Robert Frederick
Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Civil Rights (Knoxville, Tenn., 1984); Thomas R. Peake,
16
14
achievements of King, the politicians he worked with and legislation he influenced. In
the late 1980s historian Carson Clayborne challenged standard interpretations of the civil
rights movement by arguing that legislation and black liberalism sprang out of smaller
grassroots-based black organizations that created “new social identities for participants
and for all Afro-Americans.”18 More recently, historians Tera Hunter and Barbara
Ransby have furthered civil rights historiography by examining the power of black
women in shaping the civil rights movement.19 Hunter’s To Joy My Freedom charts
black women laborers in the South from the Civil War to World War I, arguing that they
shored up a degree of power through their labor. Ransby’s biography of Ella Baker
charts Baker’s political involvement and influence on civil rights legislation, and grassroots organizations from the 1920s through the 1970s. These studies contribute to a
greater understanding of the Montgomery bus boycott as they illustrate the current trend
in analyzing the role of typically understudied women and female-led groups in evoking
change.
Charles Payne’s article, “Men Led, but Women Organized,” argues that women
overwhelmingly led the movement organizationally. Women invited activists into their
homes, gave them a place to eat and sleep. Women also canvassed neighborhoods and
businesses more than men, attended more mass meetings and demonstrations and more
Keeping the Dream Alive: A History of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from King to the
1980s (New York, 1987).
18
Carson Claybourne, “Civil Rights Reform and the Black Freedom Struggle,” in Charles W. Eagles, ed.,
The Civil Rights Movement in America (Jackson, Miss., 1986), 23-27.
19
Tera Hunter, To Joy My Freedom (Harvard University Press, 1997); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the
Black Freedom Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
15
frequently attempted to register to vote.20 In his essay, Payne suggests a variety of
reasons for such high numbers of female activist participation in the movement,
especially in the 1960s. Additionally, Payne discounts theories that women were less
threatening as an explanation for their participation in such high numbers. He argues that
black women often lost their jobs for participating, were regularly clubbed at
demonstrations, shot at, raped and murdered. Based on his findings, Payne suggests that
black women welcomed opportunities to be part of an organization that thrived on
community bonds, kinship and communal networks.21 Black women’s lives in the South
encouraged them to mediate conflicts, take care of other people’s children and coordinate
everyday activities from slavery through modern time. Historian Barbara Ransby refers
to this concept as “sisterly support.”22 Because many black women did not have the
luxury to be stay-at-home mom’s and watch over their children everyday, many black
women helped out their “sisters” while they were working. This allowed black women a
way to work both in and out of the home, and contribute to the organization and
coordination of other families and their lives. It was the importance of community
organization to the movement that encouraged women’s participation and often resulted
in a higher number of female activists than male.
In response to the absence of attention given to individual African American
women and their contributions to the movement, many activists chose to write their
Charles Payne, “Men Led, But Women Organized: Movement Participation of Women in the Mississippi
Delta” in Black Women in United States History (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 1.
21
Payne, 8.
22
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 8.
20
16
memoirs, recording their experiences and demonstrating their influence on the
movement. Daisy Bates, the NAACP worker who aided in the integration of the Little
Rock Nine into Central High School told her story in The Long Shadow of Little Rock.
Written during the movement in 1962, her work served as a model for other female
activists who would write their memoirs in the 1990s. In a forward to Bates’s story
written by Eleanor Roosevelt, the former first lady states, “This is a book which I hope
will be read by every American.”23 Bates’s book is a detailed personal account of what it
was like to grow up black in the South; she argues that her story similar to most of her
black counterparts. She first experienced racism when she was seven years old, sent on
an errand to get meat from the butcher. When the butcher refused to help her until all of
the white people were served she ran home crying. Bates experienced additional
problems while trying to buy candy, and after winning a game of marbles with a white
boy. Because of such experiences, Daisy grew to hate white people until her father, on
his death-bed advised her to “hate discrimination,” not white people just because they’re
white.24 After that moment Bates decided to run an all black newspaper and later worked
for the NAACP to fight against discrimination.
As with most female activists of the movement, Bates does not cast herself as the
heroine of an event, but places herself as an important observer to the events in Little
Rock in 1957. She became aware of the problem of black schools while working as
editor-in-chief of the State Press when she ran a story about a school for black children
23
Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (New York: David McKay Company, 1962),
xii.
24
Bates, 29.
17
that was one room for twenty-seven students aged six through twelve, without outdoor
toilets, with the children performing janitorial work.25 After publicizing such a story and
confronting Governor Faubus about his anti-integrationist policies, Bates became
involved in aiding the nine high school students who integrated Little Rock’s all-white
high school. She details her role as the main communicator between the school,
government, students and parents. However, in her memoir she tells this as a “story of
the people,” with the “children of Little Rock” cast as the heroes.26
Many other female activists emulated Bates’ style of down-playing their
individual role and emphasizing the role of the community. This is true of Jo Ann
Robinson’s memoir The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, which
was published with the help of prominent Martin Luther King, Jr. historian, David
Garrow. Garrow met with Jo Ann Robinson in Los Angeles in April 1984 to interview
her for an article he was writing on the boycott. As the interview progressed, Garrow
discovered that Robinson had detailed her accounts of the boycott in a manuscript for
posterity but had little intention of publishing it. Garrow commented that Robinson’s
memoir, “though a first-person, autobiographical story, showed Mrs. Robinson to be a
resolutely self-effacing person, someone who was exceedingly reluctant to give to
herself, rather than to others, credit for some accomplishment.”27
Robinson’s memoir gives a detailed account of the Women’s Political Council,
which she presided over between 1950-1956, and their role in starting the bus boycott.
25
Bates, 50.
Bates, 219.
27
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started it: The Memoir of
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), xii.
26
18
She personalizes her memoir with varied accounts of personal abuse and the abuse others
suffered by others on Montgomery buses during the era of Jim Crow. These are
infrequently told stories of greatly personal accounts of bus drivers removing women
physically from buses, police killing “disorderly” black male passengers, and unknowing
black out-of-towners suffering from arrest for their lack of knowledge of Montgomery’s
austere bus laws. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It recounts
not only years of abuse on buses prior to Parks’ arrest, but expands further on the role of
the WPC prior to the boycott, the boycott itself, white reactions to the boycott, and the
legal battle to end segregated seating on buses (the Browder case). Robinson emphasizes
the difficulty of uniting a socially and economically diverse black population and the
amazing result of the community coming together for a common cause. For 381 days,
African Americans refused to ride city buses, volunteered to drive carpools, donated
money, organized meetings and helped families when the breadwinner lost their job due
to their protest. Robinson’s memoir reminds historians that major events, such as Parks’
arrest and subsequent large-scale boycott do not spontaneously occur. They are often the
result of long fought struggles and are preceded by years of resentment and oppression.
Rosa Parks also detailed her personal account of the Montgomery bus boycott in a
memoir, Rosa Parks: My Story. Growing up, Parks encountered discrimination and
segregation like most black individuals living in the South in the early twentieth century.
She recalls how her mother and grandfather told her stories about slavery and that her
great-grandfather was a white plantation owner who mistreated Parks’ grandfather daily.
She realized that she was different from white children when she noticed that she went to
19
a different school than her white peers. The white school children went to a schoolhouse
with glass windows, and she went to a schoolhouse with wooden shutters, and no
windows. Because of these experiences, Parks argues that she grew up tired of being
treated with little or no respect.
In her memoir, Parks writes that when she refused to move from her seat on
December 1, 1955, she “had no idea . . . that [her] small action would help put an end of
the segregation laws in the South.”28 Parks does not claim to be an innovator, the first
black person, or black women to refuse to give up her seat. She emphasizes that it was
fairly common for black men and women to refuse to give up their seats. Additionally,
she often complained to the Montgomery chapter president of the NAACP, E. D. Nixon,
that the organization needed to negotiate some changes to the bus system. Parks gives
additional credit to Jo Ann Robinson for influencing the Women’s Political Council to
challenge bus segregation laws, and Claudette Colvin for refusing to give up her seat in
the spring of 1955. Parks’ account of her act of personal protest on the bus is one of
humility. She admits that had she thought that if she would be the test case for the
NAACP and their protest against Montgomery city buses, she “might have gotten off the
bus.”29
Taking a wider view than is often possible by the writers of memoirs, historian
Danielle McGuire takes a different approach to explaining Rosa Parks and her actions
that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. In At the Dark End of the Street: Black
28
29
Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial, 1992), 2.
Parks, 116.
20
Women, Rape, and Resistance: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement, McGuire
argues that Parks’ experience as an investigator for the NAACP in the years prior to the
boycott influenced her activism in Montgomery in December 1955. McGuire labels
Parks as a “militant race woman, a sharp detective, and an anti-rape activist long before
she became the patron saint of the bus boycott.”30 While working for the NAACP, Parks
was also a member of their Committee for Equal Justice, a grassroots organization that,
once merged with the Women’s Political Council, became the Montgomery Improvement
Association, the organization that led the boycott. Rape, according to McGuire, was a
tool the white patriarchy used to ensure their domination and justify the lynching of black
men who challenged the Southern status quo. When Martin Luther King, Jr. called the
rape of African American women the “‘thingification’ of their humanity,” black women
spoke out in protest of King’s aside to their plight, and advocated for themselves and
other black women in courtrooms, launched public protests, and sparked larger national
campaigns.31 The Montgomery boycott was an additional way that black women could
challenge their assailants in public, as most of the bus riders were black women and girls.
As McGuire asserts, the Montgomery campaign was a “women’s movement for
dignity.”32
Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland
adds complexity to historical understanding of the movement scholarship by examining a
case of community activism with a single woman at the center. In this work, Peter Levy
30
Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: a New History of
the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), xvii
31
McGuire, xix.
32
McGuire, xix.
21
places Gloria Richardson at the center of the movement that took place in Cambridge,
Maryland in the 1960s. Richardson’s grandfather served on the town council for fifty
years. As a result Cambridge developed a reputation for having only a “moderate system
of white supremacy.”33 In the 1960s Gloria Richardson’s teenage daughter participated
in sit-ins and marches throughout the city. As her daughter increased in activism, she did
as well. However, Richardson led a very different movement than those led by CORE or
SCLC in the 1960s. Under her leadership, her organization, the Cambridge Nonviolent
Action Committee embraced a more militant, defiant, and armed resistance. She did not
limit the movement’s goals to desegregation in restrooms and restaurants, but instead
encouraged broader goals of empowerment, more public housing, school desegregation
and political participation. As a mother, Richardson’s understanding of oppression was
broader than most men in Cambridge. She felt the pain of her children’s segregated
education and suffered personally from living in black ghettos.
Barbara Ransby’s book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical
Democratic Vision also focuses on a single woman’s role in promoting grassroots
activism. Ransby details Baker’s participation in a variety of organizations, such as the
NAACP, In Friendship, SCLC and SNCC, her dedication to grassroots mobilization, and
examines how she shaped the civil rights movement over a broad period of time. As
Baker’s views evolved to be democratically egalitarian and she insisted on
confrontational tactics, so did the black freedom movement, and its organizations.
33
Peter B. Levy, Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland
(Gainesville, Fla., 2003), 1.
22
Ransby argues that “Following Baker’s path back through the years, trying to look at
national and world events from her vantage point, takes us to different sites of struggle,
opens up different windows of conversation, and pushes us into different people’s lives
than if we were to have someone else as our guide.”34 It is through Ella Baker’s emphasis
on grassroots participation, role as a teacher and personal confrontations with racial,
economic and gender inequalities that readers get a different and complex perspective of
the civil rights struggle from the 1920s-1970s.
Ella Baker saw civil rights through the gendered, class, and racial perspective of
her own experience. Working with the NAACP, and SCLC Baker was witness to a
variety of forms of class and gender discrimination within civil rights organizations. To
Baker, this was the flaw of the black freedom movement: a limited point of view that
looked down upon the poor, uneducated, women, or political leftists. Despite her
upbringing, which encouraged her to lead the proper middle class female lifestyle, Baker
grew to believe that everyone should become active citizens. This grassroots focus led
her to argue, “serious social change . . . lies instead in the commitment and hard work of
the rank-and-file membership and the willingness and ability of those members to engage
in a vibrant and reciprocal process of discussion, debate and decision making.”35
Current civil rights historiography expands the study of the civil rights movement
by examining dimensions of gender, class and labor.36 Contributing to this
34
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 7.
35
Ibid., 139.
36
Francis G. Couvares, ed., “The Civil Rights Movement: New Directions” in Interpretations of American
History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), 299.
23
historiography are biographies such as Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black
Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet and Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power: A
Black Woman’s Story which continue to reveal the significance of individual women to
the movement.37 From the vantage of these biographical studies of civil rights, the
movement assumes a new, challenging perspective that exposes the limited goals of the
predominately-male leadership.
Historian Lynne Olson also uses this biographical method in her study, Freedom’s
Daughters. This monograph represents a collection of biographical histories of women
who fought in the modern civil rights movement. Olsen’s goal is to overturn notions that
women did not widely participate, mold and lead the civil rights movement. In 1998
former civil rights reporter claimed “There were no women, period. No women to cover
[the movement] as journalists, and no visible women on the front lines. . . . It was very
macho.”38 In this collection, Olson argues that white women and black women were
reliant on each other, their families and the trailblazing women before them.
Additionally, she claims that without such women as Rosa Parks there would be no
Martin Luther King Jr. as the world knows him. Parks was a daughter of freedom herself,
as women such as Virginia Durr and Septima Clark greatly influenced Parks in her fight
for civil rights. Female activists, black and white from the early twentieth century
onward, faced the difficulty of balancing their lives, motherhood, work and housework
with defying presidents, the Ku Klux Klan and complex relationships with male leaders
37
Ibid., 300.
Lynn Olson Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement From 1830-1970
(New York: Scribner, 2001), 15.
38
24
of the movement. Because of these complicated choices, often singularly associated with
women, black women activists’ “needs and interests would be largely ignored by black
male activists.”39
Reflecting on the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, most Americans can
connect with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Less
well known but revealing of the limited perspective of male civil rights leaders is an
incident that occurred at the start of the speeches, when veteran civil rights activist A.
Phillip Randolph attempted to pay tribute to female activists from the past decade.
Randolph, was not quite sure what to do, or say, and introduced Daisy Bates to the stage
to deliver awards to the female activists. However, when Bates took the stage she looked
confused, as she did not have any awards to hand out, as Randolph announced, but was
there with the other female activists to show their solidarity for the movement. When
Bates left the stage, Randolph attempted to acknowledge by name these women activists
who were sitting separately from the male movement leaders, at the front of the stage, but
he was unable to recall most of their names. He acknowledged Diane Nash of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Mrs. Herbert Lee, the wife of man who
was recently killed while trying to register to vote, Mrs. Medgar Evers, but stumbled,
saying, “uh, who else uh.” Rosa Parks and Gloria Richardson had to introduce
themselves.40
39
Olsen, 16.
David E. Dixon and Davis Houck ed., Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965 (Jackson,
Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press, 2009), x.
40
25
That a tribute to female civil rights leaders, organizers, and workers turned into a
demonstration of the sexism in the movement can help scholars understand why there is a
gendered gap in civil rights scholarship. During the movement many women were
trailblazers, they created, innovated and started movements. Rosa Parks refused to give
up her seat. Jo Ann Robinson first initiated the idea of city-wide bus boycott. Gloria
Richardson started a more militant movement in Cambridge, Maryland, Ella Baker
started her own innovated ways to mobilize grassroots leadership, and Daisy Bates
started her own newspaper. However, most of these women accepting the expectation
that men would assume the torchbearer role. As Charles Payne argues, women
welcomed the chance to be a part of a community, they treated fellow activists like
family and were instrumental in planning the movement. However, as Parks, Robinson
and Bates narrate in their memoirs, many female organizers did not claim heroism, but
shared in the collective accomplishments. Because of personal humility many female
activists did not document their story or promote public recognition of their influence on
the movement. As recovered audio and video footage from the movement is digitized,
speeches are recovered, and memoirs are published, however, the history of women’s in
the civil rights movement becomes increasingly detailed and known. It is clear that
women did not just take orders from men they led the movement.
26
CHAPTER THREE
PREPARING FOR THE REVOLUTION: WPC’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST BUS
SEGREGATION IN MONTGOMERY
Introduction
In the decade prior to Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955 a group of women, mostly
educators from Alabama State College, worked tirelessly through the Women’s Political
Council (WPC) to end segregated seating on Montgomery’s city buses. The WPC
organized meetings, publicized the ill effects of bus segregation, and was the first of any
group in Montgomery to challenge Jim Crow buses directly through protests to the
Mayor and the bus company. Although told countless times in classrooms across the
country, the story of Parks’ arrest and the Montgomery bus boycott is incomplete without
paying attention to the efforts of the Women’s Political Council to lay the foundations for
united and sustained protest by the black community.
Jo Ann Robinson and Mary Fair Burks, the original founders of the WPC, were
college professors who were accustomed to enjoying a degree of respect that black
women of other occupations did not experience. As black professional women working
at an all-black university, they did not often engage with whites in their daily lives as
many other black women did on public transportation, or in service occupations. On a
Montgomery city bus, however, black women of all classes were subjected to being
called derogatory names as they entered the bus from the front, paid, exited, and then reentered through the back door. When Burks and Robinson experienced such harassment,
their bubble of privilege vanished and they saw the plight of the women who rode the
27
buses everyday – primarily those who worked as maids and nannies for white
Montgomery families. They shared their recognition of the hardships endured by women
on public transportation with their colleagues and the WPC grew. The WPC also
recognized that it would be necessary to unite an African American community that was
divided by socio-economic gaps to end racial bus segregation—one of the most public
and humiliating aspects of the Jim Crow South. Between 1947 and 1955 Mary Fair
Burks and Jo Ann Robinson, the two presidents of the WPC, filed complaints with the
three member City Commission, or “City Fathers” as Mrs. Robinson called them, to no
avail.1 The tireless efforts of Robinson and the WPC before and during the boycott, and
the influence of the WPC in the Browder v. Gale case that eventually ended the
segregated bus system in Montgomery and the United States proves that ultimately,
women trailblazers were the spark that ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 19551956.
The story of Parks’ arrest and the Montgomery busy boycott, although told so
many times in classrooms all over the country for decades, is incomplete. Rosa Parks’
refusal to give up her seat and the subsequent yearlong boycott was only successful
because the Women’s Political Council had laid the foundation that created a united
black community. Blacks made up three-quarters of the ridership on Montgomery buses.
They often did not feel that ridership was an option, like choosing to patronize a
segregated restaurant or theater, as their jobs and livelihood depended on public
1
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started it: The Memoir of Jo
Ann Gibson Robinson. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 20.
28
transportation.2 Bus ridership additionally affected women to a greater degree than men
as the use of the family car usually belonged to the male head of household, and not the
woman. Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s African Americans experienced physical
brutality, verbal humiliation and arrest for not giving up their seats to white riders, not
having exact change, or for simply attempting to ride the bus.3 The women of the WPC
fought to bring these brutalities to light, challenge the legality of bus drivers’ actions, and
teach the African American community how to protest such injustice. Although it indeed
all started on a bus, the neglected history of the WPC proves that the Montgomery Bus
Boycott started long before Mrs. Parks’ arrest.
Writing the history of the Montgomery bus boycott began almost immediately
after the boycott ended. However, it was not until the 1980s that famed Martin Luther
King, Jr. historian David Garrow addressed women’s actions and the arrests prior to Rosa
Parks. Garrow’s Walking City, a collection of interviews, journal articles, personal
reflections includes Garrow’s own ground-breaking essay, “The Origins of the
Montgomery Bus Boycott,” remains the most respected source on bus segregation in
Montgomery prior to the boycott.4 In the years immediately following the boycott, many
histories focused on the role of the church and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference in the boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Stride Toward Freedom and
Reverend Ralph Abernathy’s M.A. thesis “The Natural History of a Social Movement:
2
Russell Freedman Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (New York: Holiday
House, 2006), 83
3
Robinson, 23.
4
The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York:
Carlson Publishing, 1989).
29
The Montgomery Improvement Association” discuss the importance of church
organization, the philosophy of non-violence, Parks’s and King’s leadership, but only
briefly mention Montgomery in the years prior to the boycott.5 Although scholars have
shied away from writing larger-scale studies of the Women’s Political Council, the
memoirs of Jo Ann Robinson, Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin document the history of
the bus boycott through their honest and personal reflections on the years prior to 1955.6
Missing from civil rights and bus boycott historiography is an in-depth study of how
women worked at a grass-roots level to unite the black community in the 1940s and early
1950s. Although this was not the WPCs’ original goal, it is the central force behind
creating a citywide boycott and for understanding why the boycott was successful.
Without this study, the history of the boycott is incomplete.
Women’s Political Council
Mary Fair Burks, the founder of the Women’s Political Council lived in
Montgomery most of her life. Even as a child Burks understood the immorality of
segregation and racial degradation. As a result, she launched her own “private ‘guerilla
warfare,’ invading restrooms with signs that read ‘For White Ladies Only’ and strolling
Ralph D. Abernathy “The Natural History of A Social Movement: The Montgomery Improvement
Association.” In The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow, 99-172.
(Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989). King, Martin Luther, and Clayborne Carson. Stride
toward freedom: the Montgomery story. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010)
6
Claudette Colvin, Twice Towards Justice (New York : Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar Straus Giroux,
2009), Jo Ann Gibson Robinson The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started it: The Memoir
of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), Rosa Parks Rosa Parks: my
story. (New York: Dial Books, 1992).
5
30
through whites-only parks.”7 These acts of personal rebellion satiated Burks in her
youth, however, as an adult she grew increasingly aware of the institutions of racial
prejudice in Montgomery. In 1946, she and a white woman disputed over a right-of-way
accident. When the police arrived to settle the difference of opinion Burks was arrested
and jailed under “vague charges.”8 Although the charges were dropped, for Burks it
became clear that Montgomery needed drastic change, more than could be accomplished
through a stroll through a forbidden park. Burks formed the Women’s Political Council in
1947 because she felt it was her duty to create an organization to confront racial and
gender injustice in public, not just through private rebellions. Burks believed that black
women in Montgomery were not adequately represented by the existing political
organizations such as the NAACP or the Black Business Men of Montgomery. Burks felt
it her duty to create an organization to confront racial and gender injustice in public, not
just through private rebellions. Because black women’s only source of political action in
Montgomery was the local chapter of the NAACP, Burks formed the Women’s Political
Council. Women did not often hold positions of authority in the NAACP; additionally
the NAACP was not focused on issues that related directly to the lives of black women
such as domestic working conditions, education, and housing.
The WPC was comprised mostly of black middle class women who were working
professionals. The other members were mostly from Alabama State College, local public
school teachers, and also nurses and social workers. One of the original members,
Lynn Olson Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement From 1830-1970
(New York: Scribner, 2001), 90.
8
Olson, 90.
7
31
Johnnie Carr immediately saw a need for such an organization because Montgomery’s
chapter of the Women’s League of Voters excluded black women.9 Black voters
represented less than ten percent of the Montgomery voter population in the election of
1948 and African-American women voters represented only a small fraction of that ten
percent,10 Mary Fair Burks reflected on her limited political power in Montgomery and
the dismal amount of female African American voters in the 1940s to create the original
goal of the WPC—increase black female voter registration. With increased numbers of
black female voters, Burks saw an increase in black female political power. This was
especially important as black women although they were over 56% of the black
population in 1950, and nearly 23% of the total Montgomery population.11 The original
goal of the WPC was to increase black female voter registration to build black female
political power. By 1950 the WPC had grown into one of the most prominent civil rights
organizations in Montgomery with 300 members who were registered to vote and active
in the political community.12 As voter registration grew, the WPC expanded their goals
into voter education, political action and specifically the protest of segregated services.
Burks’ successor as the president of the WPC after 1950, Jo Ann Robinson, did
not grow up as an activist. In the early 1920s, young Jo Ann Gibson learned from an
early age how influential she could be when faced with life’s challenges. Jo Ann Gibson
grew up in Culloden, Georgia, about twenty-five miles from Macon. She was the
9
Johnnie Carr, interview by Steven Millner July 17, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 528.
10
The American National Election Studies Table 6A.2.2
11
1950 U.S. census data.
12
Erna Allen Interview by Steven Millner August 6, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 521.
32
youngest of twelve children all living with their land-owning farmer parents. The
Gibsons were quite successful as farmers until Jo Ann’s father, Owen, died. The older
children moved away and her mother, Dollie, realized she could no longer support the
remaining younger children by working the farm. She sold the property and moved in
with her children, bringing Jo Ann with her.13 From this experience Jo Ann learned how
important education was, and was determined never to be in the same situation as her
mother. In her new home, Jo Ann graduated from high school as the valedictorian and
later earned her undergraduate degree at Fort Valley State College and continued on to
earn her Master’s of Arts in English at Atlanta University. This was quite an
achievement. In 1950 only 3.1% of the African American population completed four or
more years of college, and only 1.2% of total African American college graduates were
black women.14 Robinson was aware of how extraordinary her achievements were and
she sought to encourage young black men and women to earn an education.
To complete her education, Robinson traveled to Los Angeles and New York City
to earn graduate degrees. In these places, although racism existed, Robinson experienced
a freedom she had not previously known. After completing her degrees, Robinson
returned to Georgia and started her career in education at a public school in Macon where
she met and married Wilbur Robinson in 1942. However, after the loss of her infant
child, Robinson left Macon and her husband to teach English at Mary Allen College in
David Garrow, “The Origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” In The Walking City: The Montgomery
Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow, 607-620. (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989)
607.
14
U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, U.S. Summary, PC80-1-C1 and Current
Population Reports P20-455, P20-459, P20-462, P20-465RV, P20-475.
13
33
Crockett, Texas.15 After one year in Texas, Robinson found her home in the English
department of the all-black Alabama State College in Montgomery.
Living in Montgomery and teaching at Alabama State College ultimately turned
Robinson’s life upside down, and started a personal fervor to end segregated buses in
Montgomery. In December 1949, Jo Ann Robinson boarded her first and last
Montgomery city bus and confronted the most segregated bus system in America. She
had been an English faculty member at Alabama State College since the start of the
semester and was looking forward to traveling to Cleveland for the holidays to visit
friends. Unaware of Montgomery’s strict segregated bus laws, and accustomed to the
transportations systems in the North and West, Robinson chose a seat in the third row
from the front. The driver abruptly stopped the bus to correct Robinson’s assumed
brazen behavior. “Get up from there!” the driver shouted repeatedly as he stood over
Robinson “his hand drawn back as if he were to strike [her].”16 Robinson immediately
vacated the bus, unwittingly exiting by the front door, an exit reserved solely for whites.
Distraught by her experience, Robinson decided to join the fight for civil rights through
the Women’s Political Council, formed by her colleague Mary Fair Burks two years
earlier. Robinson’s participation in the WPC influenced the organization to put its weight
behind ending bus segregation in Montgomery. From that moment Robinson saw that it
was her job to bring immediate attention to Montgomery’s segregated seating: “It was
then,” she recalled, “that I made up . . . my mind that whatever I could add to that
15
16
Garrow, 607.
Robinson, 16.
34
organization that would help to bring that practice down, I would do it. When I came
back [from vacation], the first thing I did was to call a meeting . . . and to tell them what
had happened.”17
Fighting Montgomery’s Segregated Bus System
Before the bus boycott, Montgomery city bus drivers often got away with abusive
treatment of black passengers, which if contested typically ended in the rider receiving a
punishment. Although this treatment of passengers was not officially legal, Montgomery
was known to have one of the most rigid bus segregation laws in the country. In most
southern cities such as Richmond, Virginia, Atlanta, Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee,
passengers were expected to fill city buses on a first-come, first-serve basis with blacks
filling buses from the rear toward the front and white passengers required to follow the
inverse pattern.18 Additionally, in none of these cities were blacks expected to follow the
demeaning practice of paying through a front door, exiting to re-enter through the rear
door and relinquish their seats to late-arriving white passengers.19 When Robinson
entered the Montgomery bus incorrectly in 1949 she was truly ignorant of the specific
city bus codes—codes that applied only to Montgomery’s city buses and differed greatly
from bus codes across the South. The severity of these bus codes contributed to the bus
boycott specifically occurring in Montgomery
17
Robinson, 17.
Steven Millner “Montgomery Bus Boycott: A Case Study in the Emergence and Career of a Social
Movement” in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow: 381-518
(Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 434.
19
Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s
(Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press 1969date?), 67-81.70.
18
35
In the first part of the twentieth century, bus codes were adopted with the
introduction of public trolley cars to connect suburban housing to the city center.
However, blacks in Montgomery did not strongly feel the effects of these segregation
laws as many did not have to use the bus to get to work since they worked on farms or
near their homes and used the bus system on a weekly basis to make a social visit into
town. However, as Montgomery’s black population increased in the city proper, more
people gradually began to work in the predominantly white populated areas, mainly as
domestics, and were forced to ride the bus on a daily basis. By 1955 the city buses
served seventeen to eighteen thousand daily black riders, most of whom were women as
black females outnumbered black males by twelve percent.20 The WPC’s campaign to
challenge bus segregation laws connected with black working women who relied on city
transportation. Black women in Montgomery often reflected on unfair treatment while in
department stores where clerks refused to address them with respect as Mrs. or Ms, or
had to suffer such indignities as placing protective caps over their heads prior to trying on
hats.21 Indignities the white population did not experience. Despite such degradation,
black women had a choice to patron such stores, or to shop at places friendly to black
customers. The bus system, however, was a public service black women had to use twice
daily to get to work and or home.
By 1950 the WPC had grown into three chapters of over one hundred members
each spread all over the city. As head of the English department at Alabama College
20
Millner, 435.
Johnnie Carr, interview by Steven Millner July 17, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 527.
21
36
Burks knew that she could not give both her full attention so she asked Robinson to take
over as head of the WPC. However, Burks continued to serve the WPC as a
representative and special advisor to Robinson during meetings with the mayor.22 Still
frustrated with her experience on the Montgomery bus from that cold December day,
under Robinson’s leadership fighting the segregated bus system became intensified.
The WPC’s first step was to change the black population’s opinions about
segregated bus seating. In Robinson’s opinion, “people accepted the discrimination.
They stood on the bus, over empty seats. They paid money and got off and [got back] on
from the back [entrance].”23 They were following the law without a second thought.
Many black individuals accepted the bus codes because they needed public transportation
to earn a living. Complaining about, or challenging the law could result in losing one’s
job. This legalized system of injustice needed to change; however, it was unclear how to
change a system that the black community relied on so deeply to earn a living. In the
year since her traumatic experience, Robinson learned of three Montgomery women who
were arrested for refusing to give up their seats to white riders, in addition to three
children who were arrested without conviction for their ignorance of Montgomery’s bus
segregation laws. These arrests as well as reports to the WPC of women’s mistreatment
on buses, such as drivers spitting on women, calling them derogatory names such as
“nigger bitch,” and physical abuse on both male and female black drivers, drove the WPC
22
Robinson, 25.
Jo Ann Robinson Interview by Steven Millner August 10, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery
Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 570.
23
37
to direct action.24 However, the local NAACP was not concerned with overturning that
aspect of Plessey v. Ferguson since public transportation was mainly utilized by the
working-class black population, and so was not perceived to affect the interests of the
whole black population. As a result, Robinson found it difficult to unite the black
leadership to fight segregated city buses.
In the early years of Jo Ann Robinson’s tenure as president of the WPC, she and
chief WPC members, Johnnie Carr and Irene West, sought the advice of prominent
African American organizations in Montgomery that were led by men. The Montgomery
chapter of the Alabama Progressive Democratic Association (APDA) and the Citizens
Steering Committee, a small, yet economically diverse organization of black
businessmen, were the first groups the WPC approached for advice, money,
organizational matters, or for direct access to Montgomery’s political commission. Erna
Allen, the secretary for the WPC reflected on the WPC’s interaction with these
organizations. According to Allen,
Women listened to men, they passed the ideas to men to a great extent. Mary Fair
Burks and Jo Ann Robinson were very vocal and articulate, especially in
committee meetings. But, when it came to the big meetings, they let the men
have the ideas and carry the ball. They were kind of like the power behind the
thrown. We really were the ones who carried out the actions.25
The WPC discovered that these male-run political councils did not have the same goals
and interests they did. Edgar Daniel (E. D.) Nixon, a prominent civil rights activist and
member of the NAACP, APDA, Montgomery Welfare League, and Montgomery Voters
24
Robinson, 27.
Erna Allen Interview by Steven Millner August 6, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 522.
25
38
League worked with the WPC in the years prior to the boycott and spoke on behalf of
many of the black male-dominated political organizations. In 1950 and 1951 the WPC
proposed to Nixon a plan to foster a united black community through coordinated action
by a number of organizations: the WPC would campaign to gain the support of black
females, the NAACP would encourage the support of the black male upper class, and the
APDA would gather the black businessmen. Motivated by a personal passion for ending
bus segregation, Robinson failed to recognize the importance of unifying the black
community and suggested launching an immediate boycott of city buses to bring
humiliating bus regulation to end. Although Nixon was aware of the importance of
ending segregated bus seating, he was not willing to risk losing what little political
capital the black community had on challenging bus segregation. Nixon pointed out that
rushing into a full-scale boycott too soon could alienate both the white and upper class
black population resulting in nothing changed, except possibly the election of anti-civil
rights politicians. Nixon presented Montgomery’s City Commission with a list of
requests for improved bus passenger treatment, but did not continue to press the issue
with city politicians for fear an aggressive approach on the issue would alienate the city
from electing white democratic politicians who were often sympathetic to African
Americans’ more “substantive grievances.”26 After the boycott Nixon reflected on his
initial reluctance. “I wrote the early demands ‘cause I wanted to be sure we got
26
Millner, 438.
39
something started. . . . I wanted to have something our people would accept so we could
build an organization around.”27
The goals and tactics of the WPC and the NAACP were clearly not in harmony.
The “Men of Montgomery” as Robinson called the black male-led organizations, did not
like to use the word “integration” because “it would have been too much; there would
have been much bloodshed and arrests of those who dared to disclose such an idea!”28
Because most of the women of the WPC had defied the odds by earning professional jobs
and graduate degrees, they already had a brazen attitude, an outlook that they applied to
integration. In contrast, the NAACP had been in existence for several decades, had
worked on anti-lynching campaigns and defended 14th amendment rights for blacks on
college campuses and in government jobs during WWII. The NAACP was aware of the
importance of public relations and public perception. Despite their organization’s
differences, after three years of negotiations, the WPC and NAACP fostered a unique and
effective partnership that balanced working within the law with inciting the public’s
passion for change through direct action.
In 1954, however, WPC had yet to find common ground with NAACP and
Robinson was tired of waiting. The NAACP strategy of increasing black voters to end
bus segregation had failed to achieve contact with the bus company officials.29 Other
members of the WPC were more sympathetic. Thelma Glass, believed that the NAACP
and APDA worked tirelessly to end bus segregation, but that “the Montgomery County
27
E. D. Nixon Interview by Steven Millner July 27, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 546.
28
Robinson, 23.
29
Robinson, 30
40
Commission often turned a deaf ear to the black community's plight and threatened to
arrest people if they tried to attend meetings,” and the NAACP’s hands were tied.
Robinson decided that the best course of action would be for the WPC to create
their own list of demands and introduce them to the city of Montgomery and to the bus
company independently of the other black political organizations. Presenting their
demands independently of the NAACP and the APDA was not easy for Robinson and the
WPC. They were politely heard by the council, and then positively ignored due to both
their gender and race. At a March 1954 meeting the commission decided to included
more bus stops in black neighborhoods. Although this was a request the WPC made, they
saw this gesture as having little meaning and articulately pointed out that the City
Council did not address their demand to end bus segregation.30
When news of the Brown decision calling for an end to segregation in public
schools spread throughout the South, Robinson was reinvigorated. Blacks throughout the
South saw this decision as “the second Emancipation Proclamation.”31 Robinson saw it
as an opportunity to put pressure on the city to end bus segregation. Two months later,
with increased frustration, Robinson called Mayor Gayle and said that without the
Mayor’s help “they were going in the front door [of the bus] and sit wherever they
pleased.”32 Robinson followed up with a written demand from the WPC presented to the
mayor, the City Commission, and city bus drivers to: seat blacks from back to front and
whites front to back, but allow integration when in need of seating; not require blacks to
30
Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (New York: Penguin Books,
1991), 44.
31
Carson, Eyes on the Prize, 45.
32
Olson, 91.
41
pay at the front, exit and re-enter in the rear; and have buses stop on all corners in black
residential areas. Robinson justified her demands by explaining that seventy-five percent
of city bus passengers were African American, and that “if Negroes did not patronize
them, they could not possibly operate.”33 The WPC alleged that if their demands were
not met, everyday blacks in Montgomery were prepared to arrange rides to work with
neighbors and friends, and that approximately twenty-five or more city-wide
organizations had discussed plans for a boycott. Although Robinson admitted in her
demands that “we do not want this,” she was hoping this tactic would intimidate the city
commissioners into changing the law.34
Robinson was well aware, however, that the black community of Montgomery
was not ready for mobilization for a boycott. Given her experience with the existing
black political organizations, the WPC knew that most black organizations were not
willing to disrupt the political status quo to fight against a bus segregation law that
affected mainly working class women. In addition, many poor working class blacks were
afraid their white employers would fire them. Whenever Mary Fair Burks or Jo Ann
Robinson discussed the idea of a boycott with their female peers and working-class
friends all they heard in reply was that “they had too far to go to work.” Burks realized
that “everyone would look the other way.”35 Although there had been complaints about
the laws and unfair treatment, many upper class African Americans did not actively seek
to change the laws for fear of arrest or because it did not affect them personally.
33
Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (New York: Penguin Books,
1991), 44.
34
Ibid.
35
Olson, 92.
42
Similarly, many poor African Americans who rode the bus everyday and suffered abuses
did not actively protest the laws to avoid arrests and beatings.36
For Robinson, the time had come to evoke change; she would now try to unite the
black social classes so they, as a unified whole, would lead a boycott and demand change,
not rely on a single organization. Since joining the WPC, bus laws had not changed and
Robinson realized that this would continue, “As long as black Americans [would] allow
it!”37 Robinson was determined to expose the many arrests that were made every year of
blacks who resisted bus segregation. All that the WPC needed was a perfect test case, or
a few for that matter, that illustrated African American women’s treatment on city buses.
While looking for that person, Robinson prepared a statement calling for a city-wide
boycott, with just the “effective on” date left blank.
The Search for a Model Case
E.D. Nixon agreed with Robinson; the citizens of Montgomery needed a person to
stand behind for a boycott to be successful. Ultimately that person would be Rosa Parks;
until then the WPC, with the help of Nixon, interviewed every woman arrested for
breaking bus segregation laws. Robinson was ready to launch the campaign and willing
to start a large-scale boycott over the next individual arrested, man or woman. However,
Robinson ultimately deferred to Nixon on who would be able to gain the most sympathy
for a successful protest. As president of the local chapter of the NAACP, Nixon had a
high degree of respect among black citizens of Montgomery. Even so Robinson
36
37
Millner, 435.
Robinson, 27.
43
discovered that Nixon’s help did not speed up the process of ending bus regulation. In
defense of his selectivity over choosing the right model, Nixon later recalled specific
reasons that women before Parks were unacceptable:
The case of Louise Smith. I found her daddy in front of the shack, barefoot,
drunk. Always drunk. Couldn’t use her. In that year’s second case, the girl, very
brilliant but she’d had an illegitimate baby. Couldn’t use her. The last case
before Rosa was the daughter of a preacher who headed a reform school for years.
My interview of her convinced me that she wouldn’t stand up to pressure. She
was even afraid of me. When Rosa Parks was arrested, I thought ‘this is it!’
‘Cause she’s morally clean, she’s reliable, nobody had nothing on her, she had the
courage of her convictions.38
After December 1, 1954, people would say that Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat
because she was tired. “But that isn’t true,” Mrs. Parks reflected. “I was not tired
physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. . . . No, the
only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”39 Mrs. Parks knew the law, which required her
to refrain from seating in the first ten rows of the bus, but did not require her to give up
her seat in the colored section for a white person. However, Parks was not the only
individual who knew this law and refused to acquiesce to the driver. Parks was inspired
by the strength and bravery exhibited by one of the members of her Youth Council from
the NAACP, a fifteen year old named Claudette Colvin.40
Colvin was an “A” student at Booker T. Washington High, who, ten months prior
to Rosa Parks’ arrest, was contemplating an essay she had just written in her civics class
38
E. D. Nixon Interview by Steven Millner July 27, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 546.
39
Rosa Parks Rosa Parks: my story. (New York: Dial Books, 1992),116
40
Russell Freedman Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. New York: Holiday
House, 2006), 23.
44
while boarding a Montgomery bus. The essay topic was about “the injustice of
discrimination . . . denouncing the humiliation that black teenagers like herself had to
endure.”41 Colvin sat in the middle of the bus, just as the law stated, as the bus began to
fill and faced the same situation as Mrs. Parks ten months later. When Colvin resisted
moving farther to the back of the bus the driver informed the other passengers: “That's
nothing new . . . I've had trouble with that 'thing' before."42 When challenged by a white
police officer, she cried out, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady.
I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right!" The arresting officers suggestively
commented on Colvin’s bra size on the way to the city jail, and called her “black bitch”
and “black whore.”43 While she was dragged off of the bus “kicking and clawing,”44
later that day, on the advice of her mother, Claudette acted calmly and was wellmannered when she was charged with violating Montgomery’s segregation ordinance,
disorderly conduct, and assault and battery.45
The day after her arrest the Alabama Journal reported, “Negro Girl Found Guilty
of Segregation Violation.” The article stated that Ms. Colvin, “a bespectacled, studious
looking high school student,” accepted the ruling “with the same cool aloofness she had
maintained” during the hearing.46 The NAACP received over 100 letters of
41
Olson 92.
Claudette Colvin, Twice Towards Justice (New York : Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar Straus Giroux,
2009), 17.
43
Colvin, 28.
44
Police Department of the City of Montgomery, Alabama, Complaint against Claudette Colvin, March, 2,
1955.
45
Colvin, 7.
46
Barns, Brooks. "From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History." New York Times, Nov. 11,
2009, Books section, A1 edition, <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/books/26colvin.html>
42
45
encouragement and support of Colvin, that were sent directly to her Youth Council
advisor, Rosa Parks.47 The black community had found a figure to rally around, although
it was a limited rally, it was the start of something new for the black citizens of
Montgomery. Robinson’s excitement increased as she witnessed the citizens of
Montgomery uniting behind a young girl’s act of resistance
Colvin appeared, at first glance, to be the ideal candidate to create a Montgomerywide grassroots boycott of the city buses—she was young, well educated and most
importantly, seen as a victim. E. D. Nixon, with the encouragement of Jo Ann Robinson,
began to follow Colvin closely. Nixon called on J.E. Pierce, a well-know figure at
Alabama State College, to interview Miss Colvin, her family, and hint at the possibility
of a campaign centered on her protest. However, as with similar post-arrest interviews of
black women and girls charged with violating bus segregation laws, Nixon found that
Colvin was not the right “fit” to launch a campaign. In Nixon’s opinion, “she was not the
sort of person who could best withstand the pressures sure to be exerted on any central
figure in a protest” so he left the matter alone.48 The Women’s Political Council initially
disagreed with Nixon’s selectivity, however, when it was revealed that Colvin was
pregnant with a married man’s child, Robinson agreed that the black community would
have a hard time rallying around her. Robinson asserted that “to stage a bus boycott . . .
47
Ibid,.
E. D. Nixon Interview by Steven Millner July 27, 1977 in The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 546.
48
46
the time [had to be] ripe and the people [had to be] ready. The right time came in
1955.”49
On December 1, 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for “refusing to obey orders
of [a] bus driver,” E.D. Nixon, Robinson and the WPC had found their muse.50 Mrs.
Parks lived a respectable life as a forty-two year old married seamstress. She had worked
as a dedicated secretary and sexual assault investigator for the local NAACP since 1943,
and adviser to the organization’s Youth Council. On that particular day, it was reported
that Parks was “tired from work.”51 A fatigue expected as she spent all day altering
ready-to-wear clothing, and would be experiencing the holiday rush. Suffering from such
exhaustion, Parks sat down on the city bus in the middle section, as a city ordinance
dictated that the first ten seats of each bus were reserved for whites only, regardless of the
number of whites on the bus. Shortly after Mrs. Parks took her seat, the remaining seats
on the bus began to fill. As more white individuals boarded the bus, the bus driver
requested that several black individuals give up their seat. Although Parks did not move,
three other black men did. After the driver made several requests that Parks move, he
threatened Parks, “If you don’t stand up, I’m going to call the police and have you
arrested.” “You may do that,” Parks replied in a calm manner.52 Reflecting on her
experience that historic day she wrote, “As I sat there, I tried not to think about what
might happen. I knew that anything was possible. I could be manhandled or beaten.”53
49
Robinson, 17.
Rosa Parks arrest report
51
Robinson, 43.
52
Rosa Parks Rosa Parks: my story. (New York: Dial Books, 1992),116
53
Parks, 116.
50
47
While others suffered physical abuse before that day for resisting Montgomery
segregation laws, Parks was instead arrested, fingerprinted and photographed.
Planned rebellion or not, Parks decided that “there had to be a stopping place, and
this seemed to have been the place for me to stop being pushed around, and to find out
what human rights I had, if any.”54 After her arrest, a very dignified Parks, listened to the
charge against her of refusing to obey the orders of a city bus driver, was photographed,
fingerprinted, and escorted to a jail cell. The wheels were now set in motion for a
boycott. Nixon heard of Parks’ arrest shortly after she was processed. He contacted an
acquaintance and lawyer, Clifford Durr, the brother-in-law of Supreme Court Justice
Hugo Black and quickly posted Mrs. Parks’ $100 bond. Robinson recalled, “the news
traveled like wildfire into every black home. Telephones jangled; people congregated on
street corners and in homes and talked. . . . But there was a silent tension waiting.”55
Robinson was ready to launch a boycott and wondered if Parks could be the uniting force
the WPC had been looking for. Parks was polite, levelheaded, respectful, and had
technically not violated the law as she was sitting in the black section of the bus; this was
an ideal case to highlight the injustices blacks endured while riding city buses.
While the rest of Montgomery was “sullen and uncommunicative,” Robinson
contacted attorney Fred Gray, a former student of hers, and plotted the boycott. After
hearing in detail the leaflets she had already composed calling for a boycott, Gray asked
Robinson, “are you ready?” Mrs. Robinson responded “without hesitation . . . assured
54
55
Rosa Parks in Highlander Fold School Tapes, 12-F.
Robinson, 44.
48
him that we were . . . and [we] went to work.”56 Throughout the previous year, as stories
had reached the WPC of “yellow monsters,” as black riders called them, avoiding picking
up black passengers while they waited in the rain, shutting doors on the passengers when
they exited the bus and throwing their changed at them as they paid, their militancy grew.
The women of the WPC had laid out detailed plans for such an occasion. As stories
increasingly reached the WPC of “yellow monsters,” as black riders called them,
avoiding picking up black passengers while they waited in the rain, shutting doors on the
passengers when they exited the bus and throwing their changed at them as they paid,
Robinson’s militancy grew.57
The Boycott Begins
After Colvin’s arrest, Robinson and the WPC had been ready to call for a boycott.
With Parks’ arrest they put into action their plan to distribute fifty thousand notices
calling people to boycott the buses.58 Following her meeting with Gray, Robinson
immediately filled in the date on her prepared leaflet, mimeographed it, and by 4 A.M.
the day after Parks’ arrest, the leaflets were ready to distribute. Each leaflet read:
Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to
get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It has been the
second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been
arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for
if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the
riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we
do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it
may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on
56
Robinson,), 44-45.
Robinson, 39.
58
Robinson, 39.
57
49
Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in
protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or
anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you
have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town
for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please children and grown-ups,
don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off of all buses Monday.
Robinson was careful to include the Colvin case, which was still fresh on the minds of
the black community. To create a unified movement, Robinson knew that drawing on the
southern tradition of protecting women would be a persuasive strong force, and so she
emphasized the injustices experienced by women.
Money was tight in the WPC without a treasury and Robinson had to make the
most out of her precious leaflets. Each leaflet was carefully distributed in a place where
it would be either read by a variety of people or read and then spread by word of mouth.
Between four and seven in the morning, routes were planned, and at eight o’clock the
women of the WPC distributed leaflets to Montgomery’s churches, beauty parlors, beer
halls, factories, barber shops and business places.59 The WPC had practiced for this
moment for years. Their direct and immediate action, as well as their ability to work
quickly through the night illustrated their long-awaited determination to start a boycott.
By the end of the day, “no one knew where the notices had come from or who had
arranged for their circulation, and no one cared. Those who passed them on did so
efficiently, quietly, and without comment.”60
The biggest obstacle to launching the boycott and advocating for change in
Montgomery buses was uniting the black community under a common cause. The
59
60
Robinson, 45.
Robinson, 47.
50
leaflets produced by Robinson after Parks’ arrest did just that. Nixon and the NAACP
had correctly assumed that the black population of Montgomery, specifically the
educated and affluent groups, did not know about the abuse on the buses. Until the
leaflets were distributed, many blacks were unaware of the specific arrests and treatment
many African American women endured while riding the buses. This was especially true
of the more educated and more economically well-off blacks as Robinson learned when
the president of her college, Dr. Trenhom, called her to his office to express his
disapproval of her involvement in “the Parks affair.” Rumors had spread throughout the
city that Robinson and the Women’s Political Council had been the driving force behind
the call for a boycott. Faced with Dr. Trenholm’s ignorance of the situation, Robinson
realized that a large part of the boycott would be to educate the entire black community
of physical and emotional abuses experienced by riders on the city buses. Determined
that even if he fired her, she would stay in his office until he saw the importance of a
boycott, Robinson eventually saw “the anger slowly receding from his face . . . and
concerns began to show in his expression.”61 From there the WPC knew the leaders of
the black community, lawyers, bankers, politicians and reverends, would follow.
The day after Parks’ arrest, the Friday night church service at Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church was buzzing when the churchgoers had received leaflets during the day.
Newly appointed minister Martin Luther King, Jr. could barely control the fervor and
excitement of the crowd who eagerly demanded a mass meeting the night of the
61
Robinson, 49.
51
originally planned “one day boycott,” the following Monday.62 Needing another round of
quickly printed fliers, the WPC was called on to prepare notices of the Monday night
meeting and hand deliver them door to door over the weekend. The WPC reminded the
community once again to “stay off the buses” but added information about the mass
meeting where individuals could receive “further instructions” on how to fight bus
segregation.63 These vaguely worded instructions aided in Robinson’s cause as it aroused
the interest of blacks and whites alike.
The white press, specifically the Montgomery Advisor, reported the boycott could
be a violent day of action by blacks on both the white and black communities. On the
day of the boycott the Montgomery Advisor carried the caption “Extra Police Set for
Patrol Work in Trolley Boycott.”64 The paper printed false stories of black domestics
who were not going to report to work for fear that protesting “Negros would do them
bodily harm.” Because of this, local police vowed to “maintain law and order” and
“protect Negro riders.” The efforts of the white press to discourage support for the
boycott were to no avail, as the black community “scoffed at” these stories, and empty
Montgomery buses trailed along all day void of black passengers.65
On the night of the first day of the boycott, the first mass meeting took place at
Holt Street Baptist church under the leadership of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Reverend Ralph Abernathy. At this meeting of thousands King addressed the crowd
announcing:
62
Robinson, 56.
Robinson, 56.
64
Robinson, 57.
65
Robinson, 58.
63
52
There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet
of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being
plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of
nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out
of the glittering sunlight of life’s July. . . There comes a time.66
The audience responded throughout King’s speech with words of encouragement and the
crowd agreed to continue the boycott until the buses were integrated. To continue the
protest a new organization was created, the Montgomery Improvement Association
(MIA). Robinson and the women of the WPC decided to merge their efforts with the
MIA and took on many administrative roles in the MIA including newsletter editor,
secretary, welfare secretary, and financial secretary. 67 Although the women did not take
any direct leadership roles within the MIA, Robinson and the members of the WPC knew
how important their roles were. WPC member Johnnie Carr recalled,
When all the dust settled the women were there when it cleared. They were there
in the positions to hold the thing [MIA] together. We took the position that if
anything comes up, all you have to do is whistle and the men will be there.
They’d come. But the little day-to-day things, taking care of the finances, things
like that, the women still take care of that.68
Ensuring transportation to work, organizing voluntary carpools, controlling the finances
and handling insurance for the MIA’s cars to help people avoid the buses was vital to the
success of the boycott. Without such tasks, the black community might have been
inclined to ride buses due to the hardship of avoiding them. Because of their involvement
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association Mass Meeting”
December 5, 1955 Martin Luther King Jr,And the Global Freedom Struggle Stanford. <http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/>
67
Interview with Johnnie Carr.
68
Interview with Erna Dungee Allen, 523.
66
53
in the MIA, the women of the WPC were able to keep the boycott going successfully for
over a year.
During the initial months of the boycott, the resilience of the boycott was tested as
the MIA encountered much resistance from the white community and City
Commissioners over the massive protest. The White Citizens Council (WCC), a group of
white men, predominantly businessmen, swelled in membership, with new members
joining everyday, including the city’s police commissioner Clyde Sellers. Shortly after
joining the WCC, Sellers announced on television that 85 to 90 percent of the boycotters
wanted to return to the buses, if it were not for the boycott leaders who “would attack
boycotters or anybody who advocated going back to the bus again without some
satisfactory chances in the system.” One of the City Commissioners additionally
announced that a number of businessmen were “going to lay off Negro employees who
were being used as NAACP instruments in this boycott.” 69 The boycott faced additional
problems when blacks were arrested for riding in a car with too many passengers, or were
arrested for minor traffic violations. Other boycotters faced violence, house bombs, and
rotten tomatoes, eggs and potatoes thrown at them.70
The Browder Case
As Montgomery’s City Commissioners and White Citizens Council continued to
challenge the boycott through the media, violence and other forms of intimidation, King
and the MIA decided that for the boycott officially to end they would need a legal
69
70
Robinson, 116.
Robinson, 125.
54
precedent. Although many blacks were reluctant to launch a court case to change a
system because it could be a slow process with violent repercussions from the white
community throughout the process, the MIA found strength in the Brown decision. Fred
Gray, on behalf of the NAACP, launched a precedent-making court case, similar to
Brown v. Board to challenge the constitutionality of segregated seating on buses. For a
lawsuit to be successful, Gray would have to file a federal civil suit, which did not
include Parks because her case was still a matter for the local criminal courts.71 Robinson
and the WPC found, organized, and investigated the plaintiffs for the case and on
February 1, 1956, Gray filed Browder v. Gayle, a suit on behalf of five black women who
had experienced some form of racial discrimination on local buses. Amelia Browder,
Susie McDonald, Jeanetta Reese, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were listed as
plaintiffs and the City Commissioners, Police Chief Ruppenthal, the bus company and
two drivers were listed as defendants. Gray charged the defendants with “a conspiracy to
interfere with the civil and constitutional rights of the Negro citizens” of Montgomery by
employing “force, threats, violence, intimidation, and harassment.”72 These tactics were
used to prevent the community from using public transportation, therefore depriving them
of their rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The suit
demanded the prevention of the defendants from causing such interference in the future,
define the legal rights of the parties involved and “brand the interference cited above as a
Thomas J. Gilliam “The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956.” In The Walking
City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David Garrow, 191-302. Brooklyn, New York:
Carlson Publishing, 1989), 262.
72
Browder vs. Gayle, petition of suit.
71
55
violation of the Fourteenth Amendment” making Montgomery’s City Code “null and
void.”73
The Browder lawsuit was met with much resistance by the WCC. In February
1956 the City Commissioners and WCC demanded that the grand jury investigate the
legality of the boycott claiming that the MIA violated an Alabama law that read:
Two or more persons who, without a just cause or legal excuse for so doing, enter
into any combination, conspiracy, agreement, arrangement, or understanding for
the purpose of hindering, delaying, or preventing any persons, firms, corporations,
or association of persons from carrying on any lawful business, shall be guilty of
a misdemeanor.74
After four months of investigation the MIA was found guilty of prohibiting the conduct
of business and over one hundred leaders were arrested, including Robinson. Although
meant to end the boycott, this action only strengthened the boycott and the MIA saw an
increase in donations from across the country to free MIA leaders on $300 bond.75
During a recess of the MIA trial in November 1956 a member of the Associated
Press handed King a note that read: “The United States Supreme Court today affirmed a
decision of a special three-judge panel in declaring Alabama’s state and local laws
requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Supreme Court acted without
listening to any argument; it simply said ‘the motion to affirm is granted and the
Judgment is affirmed.’”76 News of the decision spread quickly. Robinson remembered,
“after the verdict sank in, the initial outbursts subsided, tears were wiped away, voices
73
Browder vs. Gayle, petition of suit.
Alabama State Code, Title L4, Section 54.
75
Robinson, 152.
76
Christopher Coleman “Social Movements and Social-Change Litigation: Synergy in the Montgomery
Bus Protest” Law and Social Inquiry 30 (Autumn, 2005), 664.
74
56
grew calm. In a few minutes the outward emotions disappeared, to be replaced by a
prayerful attitude. Silent prayers of thanksgiving were uttered. A calm serenity spread
over most faces.”77 Although King announced that the black community would return to
the buses whenever the Supreme Court’s order was delivered to Montgomery, he knew
that there was a long road ahead to achieve equality. Just as whites had resisted school
integration throughout the South and in many parts of the North, bus integration was a
difficult step for many whites and blacks alike. Although both races were timid at first to
ride the buses, once they boarded there was a “quiet dignity” among most riders as the
drivers were happy to get their jobs back and citizens reflected on the “sophistication of
the boycott.”78 King reflected, “it must have appeared to many people that our struggle in
Montgomery was over. Actually, the most difficult state of crisis had just begun.”79
Despite the successful boycott and legal case, historians and scholars continue to
disagree on the importance of the boycott in bringing about an end to bus segregation.
Proponents of the “legal-change” thesis such as Thurgood Marshall claimed that
litigation and federal courts alone ended bus segregation: “All that walking for nothing.
They might as well have waited for the court decision.”80 Another legal scholar argues
that the violence was minimal and integration more seamless than school integration
because the combined efforts of the boycott and the Browder case reinforced each other.
The boycott produced “a ‘dynamic stalemate’ between Montgomery Blacks and city
77
Robinson, 164.
Robinson, 167.
79
Martin Luther King and Clayborne Carson. Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2010), 245.
80
Coleman, 664.
78
57
officials” when blacks declared they would not patron the buses until they were
integrated and white city officials hiding behind the law.81 Under either school of
thought, it is clear that the women of the WPC were the driving force behind both the
boycott and the landmark case ending bus segregation.
For Robinson, “The boycott [is] the most beautiful memory that all of us who
participated will carry to our final resting place. . . [people] have the right to know about
the struggle of their forebears, in helping to make this country beautiful for all its
people.”82 While passengers on city buses were integrated after the Supreme Court
handed down its decision, the fight for civil rights continued in Montgomery, the South
and throughout most of the country. For Robinson, the WPC and many teachers at
Alabama State College the struggle for civil rights and the bus boycott continued to affect
them personally and professionally. A history professor who documented the boycott for
posterity was terminated from his job and asked to leave the city in 1959 by state
officials. Although campus president Dr. Trenholm kept his job, he lost his role as a
teacher evaluator. Tensions escalated in 1960 when student protesters were arrested for a
sit-in at the college. In protest of their arrests a large number of faculty, Robinson and
Burks included, resigned on the last day of school. After their resignations, each teacher
was offered a job over the telephone that night at other colleges with higher salaries, and
better opportunities for advancement.83 With the resignations of several WPC members
at Alabama College, the WPC ended and many women joined the MIA (which continues
81
Coleman 665.
Robinson, 11.
83
Robinson, 170.
82
58
to this day) and other activist organizations. Despite the hardships faced after the
boycott, because of Robinson and the WPC “the city enjoys public bus service on an
integrated basis, as if the system had always been that way.”84
84
Robinson, 178.
59
CHAPTER FOUR
TEACHING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Historical Thinking
From the 1960s through today, the teaching of the civil rights movement has
emphasized the defiant heroes who strongly and selflessly resisted oppression. Although
it is important to understand how Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks
influenced the movement, simply teaching about a few figureheads of a movement that
relied on the participation of large numbers of everyday people, neglects the complex
social, economic and political choices African Americans had to make to have a
successful boycott. Decisions about possibly losing one’s job, losing any political capital
or facing violence or arrest. Without teaching these complexities students do not learn to
think critically about the development and complication of the movement.
Most students enter their eleventh grade United States history classroom knowing
the names and achievements of King and Parks and most can additionally connect the
Montgomery bus boycott to both individuals—Parks who started the movement with her
refusal to give up her seat to a white man and King who led the boycott to success
through nonviolent resistance. In American culture and memory, these two individuals
remain part of the American mainstream through Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the
ubiquitous use of Rosa Parks’ image sitting quietly in a bus. They are both important
individuals in American history. Equally important is teaching students the historical
context of the boycott that catapulted the two individuals to fame and prominence. Parks
60
was not just “tired” and thus refused to move from her seat. Additionally, King did not
singularly initiate and then lead the boycott without opposition. Encouraging students to
accept an incomplete story does a disservice to these two individuals who then seem to
have appeared out of thin air, and fails to encourage the students to ask the question
“why?”. To address these weaknesses, teachers can include information on historical
individuals typically not in their textbook or listed in the standards. This encourages
students to view history as complex, and that a variety of different people have a stake in
history, despite the fact that not all people are, or can be represented. Additionally,
teaching a movement or era in an in-depth manner allows students to learn how to
question other eras or moments in history. When students are exposed to this way of
learning history once, they learn the need to question other histories, and to research
protests, individuals, groups or cultural movements not commonly included in the
curriculum that impacted the American past as whole.
Teaching with Historical Documents and Images
History textbooks are excellent sources for students to gain fundamental history
knowledge. They have charts, maps, graphs, biographical asides and concisely teach
major historical events. However, they do not encourage or teach students how to think
historically. They simply tell students the facts as they are. Textbooks rarely cite their
sources, primary materials are pushed to the side, or bottom of the text (no man’s land for
a typical high school student), and the text speaks from an “omniscient third-person. No
visible author confronts the reader; instead, a corporate author speaks form a position of
61
transcendence, a position of knowing from on high.”1 Remembering endless dates,
names of people, or places is what most adults remember about their history classes. At
Back to School Night, history teachers might hear endlessly from parents about how they
were horrible in their high school history class because they have a bad memory.
Textbook-only teaching cultivates the preconceived notion that history equates to
memorization. There is another way. As historians already know, a written history is
only as good as the sources utilized. The same is true of the high school history teacher
who needs to actively seek and teach information not included in a standard textbook.
Standardized testing in history classes has taught students that it is more important
to remember facts and answer knowledge-based questions than to ask questions and
conduct research to answer higher-level analytical questions. When students confront a
primary source for the first time. After giving students a primary document to read they
will most likely respond by giving additional background to the document, telling the
teacher about the author or the specific people and/or places referenced in the document.
The problem rests with students they use their current understanding and thought
processes to assess a real past that is based on a different set of preconceptions.2 Students
learn to reveal what they know about the document to the teacher, expecting the teacher
to be singularly impressed, without questioning the document to determine the
importance of context.
1
Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of teaching the Past
(Philadelphia, Temple University Press: 2001), 13.
2
Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of teaching the Past
(Philadelphia, Temple University Press: 2001), 10.
62
This skill of teaching students how to ask questions that uncover historical context
should not only be used when presented with documents, but also with the actions of
individuals throughout history. After teaching the story of Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery bus boycott students often acknowledge that what Parks did was
extraordinary, however, most students believe that they would have had the same courage
as Parks. When I teach this unit to eleventh grade United States history students, I ask
them about the degree of courage they believe they would have in the same historical
situation. Many students claimed that they would resist the bus driver’s request to move
because of their knowledge of the Constitution and their hatred of discrimination. They
argued that the bus regulations “weren’t fair,” “violated the 14th amendment,” or was
simply “bad business” on the part of the bus company. Despite the students’ knowledge
about what is, or should be right and wrong, students lack critical thinking about why
those bus regulations exist, or why most individuals in Montgomery until the 1950s did
not resist bus codes. When presented with Parks’ story as an introductory lesson on the
civil rights movement, or the boycott itself, students should be encouraged to respond
with additional questions before drawing the conclusion that they would act similarly:
Why was Parks expected to give up her seat? Why did Parks refuse to give up her seat?
Why was that an extraordinary task at the time? If there were people prior to Parks who
did the same thing why are they not remembered? When students are taught that history
is a never-ending activity of asking questions and , they will be able to adequately
evaluate history.
63
Students learn in their history classes that they are like the historical individuals
of the past. This is a technique used by elementary school teachers to engage a younger
audience to an appreciation for the past. However, as initially useful as this method is,
for historian Carlo Ginzburg it is the bane of a future historian:
The historian’s task is just the opposite of what most of us were taught to believe.
He must destroy our false sense of proximity to people of the past because they
come from societies very different from our own. The more we discover about
these people’s mental universes, the more we should be shocked by the cultural
distance that separates us from them.3
Ginzburg’s study on the life of a miller named Minocchio who was tried, and then burned
at the stake, is an example of historical thinking that should be encouraged in every
history classroom. Ginzburg argues that Minocchio is a man similar to many men today.
Yet, what he read, his job, the activities of his children and major religious events shaped
Minocchio’s conceptualization of his own society. Students today, or even modern
historians, can only hypothesize about the past. However, students need to place some
distance between themselves and the individuals of the past. As Ginzburg argues, they
need to ask questions and research history to conceptualize the era or person in question.
Taking the example of Rosa Parks’ act of resistance, my students simply do not grasp that
Rosa Parks lived in a different time, place and set of historical circumstances than they
presently do. By encouraging students to keep some historical distance, they are able to
more accurately discern their own historical circumstances and why they could act in a
certain way, and how in Parks’ historical circumstances, her actions were courageous.
3
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), xxiii.
64
Paradoxically, students need to connect personally with history, relate to the
individuals studied, but simultaneously recognize that they live in a different era and
geographic space that cannot be realistically recreated, or understood in present-day
terms. This is the constant struggle for both the student and scholar of history. In an era
of teenage self-importance, “interest in the past is neither innate nor automatic. If
students are to learn about—or from—past occurrences, they must have personal reasons
for doing so.”4 Lessons designed for students to engage in historical imagination have a
place in history pedagogy, and are rooted in historical documentation. Evidence suggests
that learners who develop and practice habits of cognitively and emotionally engaging in
primary sources perform better whether the domain is language arts, social studies, or
science, and whether the grade level is upper elementary or high school.5 Having
students contemplate word or thought bubbles for individuals in photographs, pretending
to be the historical individual in a photograph, or organize events depicted in primary
sources based on order of importance for a movement, can encourage students to
conceptualize history. These strategies, found in the Model Lesson Plans section of the
Appendix under Document Strategies allow students to actively enter into the history in
question. Although these lessons in the Appendix may encourage presentism by
suggesting that students can imagine how people in the past thought and behaved based
on their own experiences, it is an important starting point when introducing a lesson,
document, event or historical concept. This strategy allows the student to start to observe
4
Nancy Comstock Webster Miller and Pamela Hronek, et, al. Doorways to Thinking: Decision-Making
Episodes for the Study of History and the Humanities vol 1 (Tucson, Arizona: Zephyr Press, 1995), 2.
5
Lauren B. Goldenberg and Bill Tally “Fostering Historical Thinking with Digitized Primary Sources” in
International Society for Technology in Education (2005), 1
65
basic elements of a document of photograph. They are encouraged to recognize the
diction in a speech, the facial expressions of individuals in a photograph, what is
happening in the background and to draw conclusions based on the details that they
notice. The next step is to encourage students to place those observations in the historical
context of the era. Connecting levels of questions (Historical Analysis Tools) promotes
students to incorporate in-depth historical thinking. The levels of questioning include:
Level one, or basic, questioning to level three, or personal beliefs, is the first step in the
historical process, leading to level two, or higher level questioning.
One effective strategy of fostering historical imagination outlined by Sam
Wineburg is “simulating an interpsychic process intrapsychically,” or mock reading.6
Before reading the primary document, students find a partner and read the document in
tandem. This activity can be done with any document found in the Historical Primary
Sources section of the Appendix. One individual reads the document verbatim, while the
other individual plays the role of the “mock reader,” one who notes the rhetorical devices
in the document and interprets the speech in their own vernacular. This encourages the
students to contemplate the author’s intentions within the document and the reaction of
the possible audience. In this activity students connect with the historical past, but also
bring in their present emotions, by imagining how the author and audience felt. This is a
good place to start because it encourages students to use sources beyond the textbook,
give voices to historical documents and connect with the past.
6
Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of teaching the Past
(Philadelphia, Temple University Press: 2001), 70.
66
To move beyond modern understanding, students must learn how to ask the right
historical questions. The second step in the historical process is to encourage the students
to ask themselves questions about an historical source. In a classroom other than most
science classes, it is not natural for a student to ask themselves a series of questions and
go about answering them with additional research. This method is often not used in
social science classrooms as it could have an adverse effect on the standardized test
results when students are expected to quickly answer historical questions with automatic
responses. In many history classes, students answering lower level knowledge-based
questions posed by the teacher to check that students read, or completed their homework.
In historical imagination activities, the teacher’s role becomes more active. They need to
push the students to critically think about the choices they made in their historical
reenactment, thought bubble activity or mock reading—“Why did you choose those
words, say it that way, or respond with that face?” To discover the answers students in
all likelihood will need to conduct additional research to back up their assertions. Here, a
short lesson on historical imagination molds into one on research skills, and the coupling
of evidence and analysis.
Students do not naturally have the ability to ask good historical questions.
Students need to be taught how to ask types of historically and contextually-based
questions such as what was occurring historically to influence an individual, group or
event. To model how to ask historical questions about primary sources, it is useful for a
teacher to connect a variety of documents to a few guiding questions. The Appendix
includes a set of guiding questions associated with photographs, interviews, and primary
67
sources related to the Montgomery bus boycott (Document Guiding Questions, Historical
Resource). The questions and documents are labeled by numbers, which will allow
students and teachers to see documents organized by thematic, or guiding questions. This
encourages students to organize documents together, to see how one historical event can
be shown from a variety of different contexts (such as social, economic or political) or
point of views. This additionally extends the students understanding of historical
documents by connecting it with additional evidence.
Web-Based Historical Research
Modern day researching skills require students to become familiar with online
resources. However, there is so much historical information available on the World Wide
Web; when asked to locate a primary source, students often find themselves
overwhelmed, ultimately resorting to a basic “Google” search. After typing in a phrase
such as “primary source about the Montgomery bus boycott” students are inclined to
choose the first link that appears and use the first source they find on that website. This
method of research is also used to find an image, by making the simple modification to
an “image” search. I find that students do this quite often on research-based assignments
with the result that my students typically include the same documents in their research,
despite differences in research topics or questions. As students progress in their
education, building historical research skills will give them the ability to quickly
distinguish an effective and credible website from a less reliable source.
68
More fundamentally, students struggle with discerning the difference between
primary and secondary sources. After eleven years of school, many students might have
the ability to tell a teacher that a primary source is a source produced at the specific time
period in question, or an account produced by someone who was a historical participant
or observer. However, students struggle when tasked with finding their own primary
sources, or a variety of different types of primary sources or artifacts, as well as
interpreting the source’s significance.
The purpose of the Web Quest (Lesson Plans), is to have students practice their
online primary source researching skills, using credible and reliable websites as models.
Each of the websites on the web quest is an effective model of web-based primary source
research. Students can peruse these sites to gain an idea of what makes a reliable,
credible website. Each website provides students and teachers with easy access to a
variety of newspaper articles, photographs, political cartoons, and interviews with limited
commercial advertisements. Many of the sites include an easy-to-use search engine,
easily identifiable “primary source” sections, and provides specific information for each
primary source including creator and date. By guiding students to specific websites, they
will be able to identify the specific characteristics of a good research-based website.
Once students locate a credible source, based on the modeling done in the Web
Quest, they need to be able to analyze the significance of the source. Often a student will
include primary resources that do not match their research goals merely to reach the
teacher’s research requirement. In order to teach students to select appropriate sources,
Web Quest prompts them with specific questions such as: “What is the document about?”
69
“Who produced it?” “Why type of document is it?” These level one questions (Three
Levels of Questioning worksheet, Historical Analysis Tools) encourage the students to
engage in the act of “sourcing” a document, the basic form of historical analysis,
something students do not think about doing. If a student’s primary resources do not
match their research goals, they are inclined to include the document despite this fact, to
reach the teacher’s research requirement. However, when forced to answer these
questions repetitively, students will soon not need prompting by the teacher to ask these
questions, they will become quick and automatic. Once students respond to the level one
question, they need to answer several level two questions in order to gain a complete
understanding of the document. These questions include: “Why do you think this
document was produced?” “What is the goal of the document?” “How do you know?”
These level two questions help the students to understand the specific historical
circumstances that produced the document. Furthermore, the Web Quest asks students to
justify their answers by drawing out specific information from their sources. This can
include summarizing the text, quoting the text, or analyzing symbols found in images.
Finding a source often leads the researcher to conduct more research. This is a concept
lost on most students who want instant gratification. These level two questions remind
students that they may need to conduct further research and to ask themselves additional
questions. For example, if students find a photograph of a “church taxi” funded by the
black churches in Montgomery to aid in avoiding buses, students should model the level
of questioning to pose addition questions such as: Did the church encounter problems
70
with local authorities over this solution? How did the church fund these taxis? How did
people know how to access this new form of transportation?
Performance Assessments
Yearly standardized tests emphasize students’ abilities in factual learning. In
history, assessments test student knowledge of major causes, effects, names of key wars
and specific individuals who shaped the history tested. Teachers may cover the entire
curriculum needed to perform well on a standardized test given by the state or designed
by the teacher. Yet, covering the information does not necessarily mean that students
have learned, or understand history. An alternative to this type of routine fact-based
testing are “performance assessments,” in which students do “or produce something.”7
Performance assessments prove to the teacher that the student now only knows what
happened historically, they are able to research, analyze and evaluate historical
significance. No longer do Americans live in an era dependent on memorization. Long
gone are the days of memorizing phone numbers and important dates. The same is
applied to history. With a few keystrokes on a phone, iPad or computer, one can pull up
a quick reference giving as much historical detail as needed or wanted. Thinking like a
historian, however, requires students to know how to research and evaluate sources, see
the big picture and place a value on decisions of the past. Several elements of the
Appendix provide methods for teaching students to analyze the historical big picture
(Document-Based Question and Student Guide, Document Guiding Questions, Historical
7
Jere Brophy ed. Advances in Research on Teaching: Teaching and Learning History vol. 6, (Greenwich,
Connecticut: Jai Press, Inc, 1996), 222
71
Analysis Tools). As Sam Wineburg states, “Historians know . . . how to be a citizen in a
cacophonous democracy.”8 Although not deeply connected with standardized testing
skills, performance assessments encourage a historical skill base and ultimately should
result in deeper memorization as students actually do something with the history they
learn. These are skills that they will carry with them the rest of their civic lives.
An overarching goal of history education is for students to find their own
historical artifacts, or primary sources, connect those sources to a variety of other
historical events and people, and interpret the specific causes and effects of that primary
source. Teaching researching skills in a history classroom is not only part of the
Common Core Standards, it is also a skill students can transfer to other aspects of their
civic lives. These skills, when used later in life, can help adults find reputable sources to
determine how to vote, influence legislation, and evaluate information. Students today
have a previously unknown level of access to primary sources through websites run by
the Library of Congress, National Archives, countless universities, nonprofits,
presidential websites and museums that make pictures, census data, court records and
personal papers available to students with the click of the mouse. The problem, outlined
in the previous section, “Web-Based Historical Research,” is how to find sources
appropriate for a given historical problem or question. After learning how to conduct
historical primary source research in a computer lab with the aid of the teacher, students
Peter Carlson “Interview: Sam Wineburg, Critic of History Education” in American History (December
2011) 28-29, 29.
8
72
are able to attempt to complete their own primary source research individually or in small
groups.
Research outside of the classroom using these historical databases allows the
student to think outside of the textbook, connect with real voices of the past and consider
the complexity of the lives of individuals who lived through different times.
Additionally, education in general asks students largely to learn how to think critically
and to do so independently. By completing a historical project, such as the Museum
Project (Appendix), in which students choose their own primary documents to create a
narrative about an event, students “own” a part of history and are able to connect with it
historically. However, asking students simply to gather primary sources will create a
mess for a teacher to grade, most accurately because students have a tendency to print out
the first photograph, political cartoon or speech that Google responded with.
A popular tool for performance-based assessments in history is the Document
Based Question (DBQ), (Appendix: Model Lesson Plans). This is a tool that started in
Advanced Placement history classes and has been adapted to the general history
classroom. The DBQ includes a high-level thinking question and a variety of documents.
Students are tasked with answering the question using a variety of the documents in their
answer as evidence. Students are additionally graded on their use of information not
presented in the documents. This is most often done as a summative assessment after
students have studied a unit or event and been exposed to a variety of primary source
materials from that era and responded to historical questions.
73
The flexibility of the DBQ method – it can be answered in a variety of ways –
gives the students the optimum chance to excel. The DBQ found in the Appendix poses
the historical question, “Was the Montgomery bus boycott successful?” and allows
students to answer it in terms of economic, political and social success; by focusing on
the events prior to the boycott; focusing on religious or even gender influences on the
event. With a DBQ students prove what they know and requires them to analyze primary
documents and group events and documents together to present a greater meaning.
Practicing evaluating information in a DBQ format is another way to practice not only
historical thinking, but also critical thinking-the ability to evaluate information and
problem solve independently.
Conclusion
History is not simply about retaining information. History is about evaluation,
argument, analysis, and inquiry. Teaching history one era at a time, without the use of
historical questioning or research is simply not teaching history, it is teaching
information. History is a skill-based discipline that instructs students on how to process,
find and evaluate information about historical people, eras and events. Under current
California content history standards teachers find themselves rushed to present historical
information, often neglecting the overarching critical thinking goals of history. Teaching
the Montgomery bus boycott in depth by using the methods presented in this project,
allows the students to both learn historical material and exercise historical thinking skills.
Educational scholar Daniel Wick argues for teachers to remember depth, not necessarily
74
breadth in their pedagogy: “It is impossible for a student to reason critically concerning
something about which he knows nothing.”9
The role of the history educator is an important one. As Raymond Nickerson
argues, “To fail to develop one’s potential in [critical thinking] is to preclude the full
expression of one’s humanity.”10 Teaching writing, reading, and research skills are not
the sole property of language arts educators just as education and critical thinking does
not stop once one graduates. American citizens have the civic obligation to evaluate the
past and present in order to make decisions about the future. As teachers in classrooms
across the country witness on a daily basis, some students have the natural ability to
question history or the facts presented to them. However, teachers cannot rely on
students to learn how to develop questions individually. The role of the history educator
is to model how to ask the right historical questions, present their students with a variety
of primary documents that offer differing perspectives and teach students how to do the
same independently. When these skills are cultivated in classrooms students will have
the ability to find a deeper meaning and appreciation for history and its importance in
American society.
Daniel Wick, “In Defense of Knowledge: An Intellectual Framework for General Education.” in Change:
The Magazine for Higher Learning vol. 13(6) 1981, 8-9.
10
Raymond S. Nickerson, “Why Teach Thinking?” in Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice, ed.
Joan Boykoff Baron and Robert J. Sternberg, (New York: W.H. Freeman and Co, 1987), 32.
9
75
APPENDIX A. TEACHING APPLICATION
Forward
This resource Appendix is meant to be used in social studies classrooms for grades 7-12.
Parts of the Appendix apply to California History-Social Science Content Standards:
Kindergarten K.6.1; Third grade 3.4.6; Eleventh grade 11.10; Twelfth grade 12.5.4. The
chief purpose of this Appendix is to help teachers present a thorough history of the causes
of the Montgomery bus boycott, and to teach students to analyze historical cause and
effect. Included in this Appendix are: Model lesson plans, primary sources (photographs
and documents), guiding questions for the sources, oral history interviews with guiding
questions, a culminating research project and a document-based question essay with a
teacher’s and a student’s guide. To help the teacher gain additional background
knowledge on the subject of the Montgomery bus boycott there is a background essay
and two historical reference tables on terms and key individuals.
The purpose of this Appendix is to model for teachers how to teach students to take an indepth look at an historical event. The focus of the Appendix is engaging students in
asking and answering historically based critical thinking questions. Major historical
events like the Montgomery bus boycott do not just automatically occur. When teaching
the civil rights movement it is important for students to understand that lacking basic
rights was not enough for a community of people to organize a mass protest. In order to
understand the importance of major historical events students need to understand the
myriad factors that aided in mass mobilization including: why black citizens of
Montgomery were ready for a boycott in 1955, why Rosa Parks garnered mass attention
after her arrest, why and how the boycott lasted for over a year. Gaining a thorough
understanding of historical causation is a skill that once mastered with this unit, students
can apply to future history lessons.
There are a variety of ways to scaffold the activities found in this Appendix. If students
do not have much practice with primary source analysis, specific tools such as “SOAPS,”
and the “Analysis Worksheets” should be used with students prior to asking students to
engage in one of the “Document Strategies/Activities.” These analysis worksheets ask
the student to analyze small details about a source that aid in student comprehension and
get the student to become familiar with the source. If a class is advanced, the teacher can
have the students engage in one of the suggested strategies or activities. These are
designed for the student to connect with the period, events, and people involved. Many
activities ask the students to imagine what it would be like to live in that period and to
have first-hand experience of the events studied. These activities ask the students to have
some historical imagination. This is effective in gaining a student’s interest in the
subject. However, a student should have a thorough knowledge of the subject prior to
these activities. Without background knowledge a student may not take the activity
seriously, or know how to imagine the source as it existed when it was produced.
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Primary sources are windows into the past. In order to gain an in-depth perspective on
the source it is important for students to learn how to analyze a variety of sources. This
Appendix includes images, documents, and interviews. The document worksheets and
activities help the student engage with the source. In order to teach the students to think
critically about the source, the teacher should next ask the students one of the guiding
questions associated with the source. These guiding questions act as a model for asking
historically based critical thinking questions. As the teacher progresses into the critical
thinking questions, they should ask the students to analyze two or three sources together,
with the same question. This strategy will help students see a variety of historical
perspectives on the same event and reveal the complexity of the movement. After
enough practice, students should be able to ask their own level two questions (from the
“Three Levels of Questioning Guide”).
The two summative assessments in the binder, the DBQ and Museum Activity assess
student understanding of the unit, and their primary source analysis skills. The museum
project assesses a student’s ability to research independently and analyze primary sources
they gather. By completing a historical project, such as the Museum Project in which
students choose their own primary documents to create a narrative about an event,
students “own” a part of history and are able to connect with it on a higher, historical
level.
The flexibility of the DBQ method – it can be answered in a variety of ways – gives the
students the optimum chance to excel. The DBQ found in the Appendix poses the
historical question, “Was the Montgomery bus boycott successful?” and allows students
to answer it in terms of economic, political and social success; by focusing on the events
prior to the boycott; focusing on religious or even gender influences on the event. With a
DBQ students prove what they know and requires them to analyze primary documents
and group events and documents together to present a greater meaning. Practicing
evaluating information in a DBQ format is another way to practice not only historical
thinking, but also critical thinking-the ability to evaluate information and problem solve
independently.
The overall goal of this Appendix is to make teaching document analysis and the
Montgomery bus boycott more accessible to teachers. Please use the whole Appendix, or
just bits and pieces. Use what works for your students and for you as a teacher.
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Model Lesson Plans
Web Quest
Common Core Standard Research 7
Student Research Web-Quest—Use the following websites for your Web Quest
http://www.montgomeryboycott.com/
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/index.html
http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Home.jsp
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/381.pdf
Please find one primary document produced by the Women’s Political Council. Print it
out, and attach it to this worksheet.
1. Describe this document. What is this document about? Who produced it? What
type of document is it?
2. Why do you think this document was produced? What is the goal of the
document? How do you know?
Please find one primary document relating to Rosa Parks. Print it out, and attach it to this
worksheet.
3. Describe this document. What is this document about? Who produced it? What
type of document is it?
4. Why do you think this document was produced? What is the goal of the
document? How do you know?
78
Please find one primary document relating to the Montgomery Improvement Association
(1955-1956). Print it out, and attach it to this worksheet.
5. Describe this document. What is this document about? Who produced it? What
type of document is it?
6. Why do you think this document was produced? What is the goal of the
document? How do you know?
Please find one primary document relating to the Browder v. Gayle case. Print it out, and
attach it to this worksheet.
7. Describe this document. What is this document about? Who produced it? What
type of document is it?
8. Why do you think this document was produced? What is the goal of the
document? How do you know?
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Activities/Lessons for Images
Common Core Standard Key Ideas and Details #1
1. Thought/Word Bubbles
a. Show the students an image with one individual, or a group of individuals
b. If teacher is introducing someone new, they can have the students place
word or thoughts into the individuals in the images without any
background knowledge. This will encourage the students critically to
think about the image and the people in it. Where are they? What are
they doing? Why are they doing this? How do they feel about what is
happening in the picture?
c. The teacher can also show the image after teaching a concept or an event
and have the students place words or thoughts into the historical
individuals based on their new knowledge. Students can also complete the
activity twice—once prior to the lesson, and once after. This will show
the teacher what the students learned about the topic, and again, encourage
them critically to think about the people in the photographs.
The following activities work on students building their prior knowledge in the subject
area while also teaching students to think historically. Teachers can either frontload
students with information from the unit (by using the PowerPoint, Interviews, Boycott
Essay, Documents and/or Reference Terms), or teachers can give the students historical
information after the lesson/activity. Giving students the information afterward will give
students a choice to compare their analysis with the teacher’s analysis. This can be
effective modeling as the students can review their historical though processes. It is
recommended to have a combination of the methods.
2. Chronological Order
a. Students should be given a variety of images, at least five. This is a good
lesson for the end of the unit or after teaching an event. Instruct the
students to place the photographs in chronological order. This should be
done in a group so that students can actively discuss their decisions. Once
the students believe they have placed the images in chronological order,
they must explain what is going on the image, background information for
the image and why they believe it is placed where it is. How do they
know it goes before one event, and/or after another?
3. Newspaper/Newscast Reporter
a. Hand out a different photograph to a group of students (2-4). Have one or
two students in the group take on the role of a reporter (either from a
newspaper, talk show or newscast), the other students can either be
witnesses of what was going on in the photo, or individuals in the photo
80
themselves. The students must come up with interview questions and
answers to the questions. There must be four level one questions (Who is
participating, where are you? ), and answers, three level two questions
(Why are you there, what do you hope to happen?) and answers and one
level three question (What would you change about what is going on?) and
answer. At the end of class students must project their image to the class
and present their interview.
4. Historical Reenactment
a. This activity can be done individually, or in a group up to five.
b. Hand out a different photograph to the groups/individuals. The students
must decide what happened immediately prior to, during and immediately
after the photograph. Students will write three paragraphs for the
photograph (what happened prior to the photo, during and after) with
analysis on why they believe those assumptions to be true. After the
writing, have the students act out the before, during and after of the
photograph with appropriate dialog.
c. For extra credit have students research what happened in the moments
prior to, during and after the photograph.
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Document Strategies/Activities
Common Core Standard Key Ideas and Details #1
**Students should use information from their Web Quest, Background Essay, Images,
Reference Terms and/or Interviews to aid them in these document analysis activities.**
1. SOAPS
Have the students complete a SOAPS chart for a specific document
1. Speaker
o Who is the speaker who produced this piece? What is the their
background and why are they making the points they are making? Is
there a bias in what was written?
2. Occasion
o What is the Occasion? The time and place of the piece. What
promoted the author to write this piece? What event led to its
publication or development? It is particularly important that students
understand the context that encouraged the writing to happen.
3. Audience
o Who is the Audience? The group of readers to whom this piece is
directed. The audience may be one person, a small group or a large
group; it may be a certain person or a certain people. What
assumptions can you make about the audience? Is it mixed racial/sex
group? What social class? Political party? Who was the document
created for? Are there any words or phrases that are unusual or
different? Does the speaker use language the specific for a unique
audience? Does he speaker evoke God? Nation? Liberty? History?
Hell? Does the speaker allude to classical themes: the Fates, the
Classical, Pericles, Caesar? Why is the speaker using this type of
language?
4. Purpose
o What is the purpose? The reason behind the text. In what ways does he
convey this message? How would you perceive the speaker giving this
speech? What is the document saying? What is the emotional state of
the speaker? How is the speaker trying to spark a reaction in the
audience? What words or phrases show the speaker’s tone? How is the
document supposed to make you feel? This helps you examine the
argument or its logic.
5. Subject
o What is the subject of the document? The general topic, content, and
ideas contained in the text. How do you know this? How has the
subject been selected and presented? And presented by the author?
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2. Order of Importance
a. Gather a group of documents together that are related under the same topic
ie: Civil Rights Movement, but represent different people or events.
b. Have the students put the documents in order of importance, and explain
why they chose that order—which event sparked the most controversy,
which person is the stronger civil rights leader, which event contributed
most for the need to have a campaign in Birmingham? etc.
3. Document Chronological Blackout
a. Same as “Order of Importance” but black out dates on the documents and
have the students hypothesize the date, which can be as specific as the
teacher wants
b. Have the students explain why they think that document is that date, and
have the students place the documents in chronological order
c. Discuss the documents and reveal the true information at the end of class.
4. Document Information Blackout
a. Same as “Order of Importance” but black out key words on the documents
and have the students hypothesize which event, person etc. the document
is talking about.
b. Have the students explain why they think that document is referring to that
event or person.
c. Discuss the documents and reveal the true information at the end of class.
5. Basic Document Analysis Questions
a. List three things the author said that you think are important.
b. Why do you think this document was written?
c. What evidence in the document helps you know why it was written?
Quote from the document.
d. List two things the document tells you about life in the United States at the
time it was written.
e. Write a question to the author that is left unanswered by the document.
6. Response to Newspaper Articles
a. After reading a newspaper article, have the students examine the basic
information of the articles, and the point of view, if there is one.
b. Have the students take on a specific persona, real or made-up. Based on
that person, have the students write an opinion letter to the articles
stating—how they feel about the article or focus of the article and why.
This should be persuasive.
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Montgomery Bus Boycott PowerPoint Presentation
Slide 1
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Please take out a sheet of paper
Slide 2
Opener Question
• “Three years later, in 1952, a white bus driver and a Negro man
exchanged words over the dime the passenger put into the slot.
The Negro man, Brooks, was not afraid, for he had been
drinking. He never quavered when the driver abused him with
words and accused him of not putting the money into the meter
box of the bus. Instead, he stood his ground and disputed the
driver. The drink gave him confidence to stand there, and to sit
down and to talk back in his own defense. What followed was
never explained fully, but the driver called the police, and when
the police came they shot and killed Brooks as he got off the
bus.” (Robinson, 21)
• Why would it take several decades of abuse to organize a
boycott? What do you think are obstacles to launching a
boycott? How do you overcome those obstacles?
Slide 3
Conditions for a Boycott
• Montgomery had the most severe
bus laws
– Blacks pay up front, get off, get on in
the back
– Drivers had the authority to call police
to arrest passengers at will
• Reports of drivers leaving black
passengers once they paid, not
stopping to pick them up or
dropping them off correctly
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Slide 4
The Women’s Political Council
• Formed in 1947 at Alabama State College
by Mary Fair Burks
• 1950 Taken over by Jo Ann Robinson
• Sent letters to bus companies, the mayor,
NAACP and local black men’s political
organizations
• Argued for a boycott in 1953, was the first
group to organize a boycott after Parks’
arrest
Slide 5
Claudette Colvin
• Student
• Worked on an essay on “The
Injustice of Discrimination” on
the day she was arrested for
refusing to move for a white
man.
• "It's my constitutional right to sit
here as much as that lady. I
paid my fare, it's my
constitutional right!"
• Left the bus “kicking and
clawing.”
Slide 6
NAACP
• National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People
• E.D. Nixon is president of the Montgomery
Chapter
– Hesitant to launch a boycott because of
the cost in political capital
• Rosa Parks was director of the Youth
Council
– Claudette Colvin was a member of the
Youth Council
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Slide 7
E. D. Nixon
•
The case of Louise Smith. I found her daddy in front of the shack,
barefoot, drunk. Always drunk. Couldn’t use her. In that year’s
second case, the girl, very brilliant but she’d had an illegitimate
baby. Couldn’t use her. The last case before Rosa was the
daughter of a preacher who headed a reform school for years. My
interview of her convinced me that she wouldn’t stand up to
pressure. She were even afraid of me. When Rosa Parks was
arrested, I thought ‘this is it!’ ‘Cause she’s morally clean, she’s
reliable, nobody had nothing on her, she had the courage of her
convictions.[1]
•
[1] E. D. Nixon Interview by Steven Millner July 27, 1977 in The
Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, ed. David
Garrow (Brooklyn, New York: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 546.
Slide 8
Rosa Parks
•
•
•
•
Seamstress
Trained in non violent protest
Active member of the NAACP
Parks was arrested for “refusing
to obey orders of [a] bus driver.”
• “If you don’t stand up, I’m going to
call the police and have you
arrested.” “You may do that,”
• “But that isn’t true,” Mrs. Parks
reflected. “I was not tired
physically, or no more tired than I
usually was at the end of a
working day. . . . No, the only
tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Slide 9
The Boycott
•
•
•
•
•
Montgomery Improvement Association
– Headed by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Walked
Took Taxis
Organized carpools
Challenges to the boycott
– Montgomery police called the boycott illegal and threatened arrests
– Many individuals lost their car insurance
86
Document Based Question
Common Core Standard Writing #1: Instructions:
Please answer the following question using at least 5 documents, your knowledge of the
civil rights movement, documents/images used throughout the unit and information from
at least 3 different oral histories.
To cite a document, please write the letter the document represents next to its reference.
For example—“Sit ins were a major part of achievement in the civil rights movement”
(A).
Question: Was the Montgomery bus boycott successful?
Document A—Photo by Don Cravens Courtesy Time Life. Pictures/Getty
Images. 1956.
Document B—Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery,
Alabama
87
Document C—Code of the City of Montgomery, Alabama. Charlottesville:
Michie City Publishing Co., 1952. Alabama Department of Archives and
History, Montgomery, Alabama
88
Document D— Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., The Eyes on the Prize Civil
Rights Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 44-45
Honorable Mayor W. Gayle, City Hall, Montgomery, Alabama
Dear Sir:
. . . There were several things the Council asked for:
1. A city law that would make it possible for Negroes to sit from back
toward front, and whites from front toward back until all the seats are taken.
2. That Negroes not be asked or forced to pay fare at front and go to the rear
of the bus to enter.
3. That busses stop at every corner in residential sections occupied by
Negroes as they do in communities where whites reside.
. . . Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances
are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could
not possibly operate.
More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and
friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers.
There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of
planning a city-wide boycott of busses. We, sir, do not feel that forceful
measures are necessary in bargaining for a convenience which is right for all
bus passengers.... Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably
upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our
busses. We do not want this.
Respectfully yours,
The Women’s Political Council
Jo Ann Robinson, President
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Document E— Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery.
MIA Meeting Notes.
This is a historic week because segregation on buses has now been declared
unconstitutional. Within a few days the Supreme Court Mandate will reach
Montgomery and you will be reboarding integrated buses. This places upon
us all a tremendous responsibility of maintaining, in face of what could be
some unpleasantness, a calm and loving dignity befitting good citizens
and members of our Race. If there is violence in word or deed it must not be
our people who commit it.
...
2. The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.
3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word
and action as you enter the bus.
. . . 5. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior.
6. Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all
Montgomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
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Document F— February 1956.. Montgomery County Archives.
Document G—Browder v. Gayle
We cannot in good conscience perform our duty as judges by blindly
following the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson, supra, when our study
leaves us in complete agreement with the Fourth Circuit's opinion n15 in
Flemming v. South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., 224 F.2d 752, appeal
dismissed April 23, 1956, 351 U.S. 901, 76 S.Ct. 692, that the separate
but equal doctrine can no longer be safely followed as a correct statement
of the law. In fact, we think that Plessy v. Ferguson has been impliedly,
though not explicitly, overruled, and that, under the later decisions, there
is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be
validly applied to public carrier transportation within the City of
Montgomery and its police jurisdiction. The application of that doctrine
cannot be justified as a proper execution of the state police power.
91
DBQ Teachers Guide
Document A
Document Information—Photograph shows the “mobile churches” that provided
transportation to individuals boycotting the city bus lines. Many of the vehicles were
provided by the church and paid for by church donations given around the world in
support of the boycott. After local insurance companies refused to insure the church
vehicles, Lloyds of London offer to insure the vehicles.
Document B
Document Information—Telegram sent to Judge Carter who oversaw the arraignments of
several bus boycott leaders including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jo Ann
Robinson and E. D. Nixon. Business leaders “Diamond Brothers” report to the presiding
judge that they have cancelled plans for a new manufacturing building in Montgomery.
This was a major economic loss for the city. Because of the tumult in Montgomery
downtown businesses suffered economically and the city bus lines struggled. As a result,
bus lines had to increase its fare after three months of boycotting.
Document C
Document Information—Montgomery city ordinances relating to riding the buses.
Montgomery had some of the most severe bus codes in the United States. It was illegal
for the integration of the races on most city buses in the South. However, in
Montgomery, African Americans had to board the bus in the front, pay, exit the bus, then
re-board the bus in the back entrance. Additionally, the bus driver had the same authority
as a city police officer.
Document D
Document Information—Jo Ann Robinson led the Women’s Political Council, a group of
mainly educated, professional black women in Montgomery. From 1950, Robinson’s
goal with the WPC was to create better bus legislation. This is one of many letters
Robinson and the WPC set to Mayor Gayle requesting African Americans better
treatment on buses. This was two years prior to the start of the boycott.
Document E
Document Information—Shortly before the city buses were planned to integrate, Martin
Luther King Jr., as leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, made several
suggestions for re-boarding the bus. Because the boycott lasted 381 days, King was wary
about both the white and black reaction to bus integration. In these suggestions he
requests that African Americans not boast or brag, but handle themselves graciously and
with respect. As a non violent protestor, King hoped to avoid violence.
92
Document F
Document Information—Arrest photo of Jo Ann Robinson, leader of the Women’s
Political Council. Robinson, Rosa Parks, E. D. Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr. and
several other boycott leaders were arrested in February 1956 for leading an illegal
boycott. In Montgomery, as part of anti-communist hysteria, it was illegal for an
individual or group to boycott a public business. After the Montgomery Improvement
Association became aware of several members’ warrants for arrest, the boycotters turned
themselves in to the police department and were all shortly released on bail.
Document G
Document Information—The boycott finally ended after 381 days because the Supreme
Court ruled on the Browder v. Gayle case brought by E. D. Nixon of the NAACP,
Robinson and attorney Fred Gray. The five plaintiffs, including Claudette Colvin,
challenged Montgomery’s bus segregation laws calling them “unconstitutional,” violating
the 14th amendment which gives equal protection under the law. Although boycotters
only demanded better treatment on the buses, paying and boarding the bus on the front
and sitting first come first serve, back to front for African Americans, front to back for
whites, the Browder case ordered for full integration of all public buses.
93
DBQ Student Support
**Students may consider organizing their DBQ using economic, social and political as
argument structures. **
Economic—
1. Pertaining to the production, distribution, and use of income, wealth, and
commodities.
a. Examples—class systems, how things are made, how people buy their
products.
2. Involving or pertaining to one's personal resources of money: to give up a large
house for economic reasons.
a. Examples—choices when making or spending money. Where does one
shop, what economic decision one makes and why?
Social—
1. Seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
a. Examples—Organizations, affiliations, church
2. Of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a
social event.
a. Events, marches, demonstrations
3. Living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather
than in isolation: People are social beings.
Political—
1. Of, pertaining to, or connected with a political party: a political campaign.
a. Example—Campaigns, political parties
2. Exercising or seeking power in the governmental or public affairs of a state,
municipality, etc.: a political machine; a political boss.
a. Seeking political office
3. Of, pertaining to, or involving the state or its government
a. Laws, legislature, police, government
4. Having a definite policy or system of government: a political community.
a. Examples—types of government, government change
94
Purpose: Buckets can be a helpful tool to organize and categorize
documents. Using the “DBQ Student Support Sheet” as a guide,
students can write the letter of the document in the bucket that is most
appropriate for that document. This will help the students to organize
their paragraphs and categorize their documents.
Instructions: Which Documents Belong in Which Bucket?
**Hint, you can place the same document in multiple buckets**
ECONOMIC
SOCIAL
POLITICAL
95
Museum Project
Common Core Standard Research #7
Museums provide an excellent atmosphere for students to learn, explore and connect
ideas together. Some museums are not that exciting—they are empty, only contain one
type of media and people are not there to help guide them. This is not the case at the
Civil Rights Movement Museum of California!!! There are many different medias to
explore: Art, music, maps, dioramas, dolls, artifacts, documents, music etc…
Your task is to create a museum exhibit on your assigned Civil Rights Movement MiniUnit. This museum must be:
1. Creative—Visuals are a key. There must be (if applicable) maps, posters,
artwork, three-dimensional objects, props, music etc. All visuals,
including maps, pictures, artwork, must have small captions below them
explaining what they are.
2. Educational—must cover all aspects of your topic as well as expand upon
them. Must be factually accurate
3. Experienced—one member of you group will act as the docent (a person
who is a knowledgeable guide, esp. one who conducts visitors through a
museum and delivers a commentary on the exhibitions). Each group
member is responsible for preparing the 2-3 minute presentation the
docent will give. There will be 2 additional minutes for the docent to
answer questions, and classmates to explore the exhibit as they take notes.
Museum Day Instructions: Set up: 5 minutes Travel: 4 minutes each station, 10 second
passing period Clean up: 4 minutes
Goals:
1. You, as a student, will learn about the Civil Rights Movement in a creative and
dynamic way.
2. You will be prepared for the unit exam on _____________
3. You will work positively in a collaborative working environment
4. Your creativity will extent to historical bounds.
What will be produced/What you will be graded on:
1. The docent’s presentation—A speech will be typed up and submitted to the
teacher. All of the terms will be highlighted. (2 COPIES PRINTED)
2. All of the elements on the rubric which must be present in the exhibit
3. A TYPED description of all of the artifacts using the “Artifact Sheet” on School
Loop (you should have between 15-20, there could be multiple artifacts for one
term) in your exhibit. Explain 1. The artifact (Fragment) 2. How the artifact
connects to/represents the term (3-5 Detailed Sentences). (2 COPIES PRINTED).
PLEASE NUMBER YOUR ARTIFACTS.
96
Artifacts can include
 Primary documents—newspaper articles, diaries, executive orders
 Images—paintings, cartoons, maps, photographs
 Music
 3-D objects such as—dioramas, dolls, applicable toys etc…
 No secondary text sources
Groups: Each group will be responsible for creating a museum exhibit for one of the
following mini-units. All information from lecture/class must be included in the exhibit
as well as evidence of further research
1. Early Civil Rights History
a. 13th Amendment
b. 14th Amendment
c. 15th Amendment
d. Plessey s. Ferguson
e. Jim Crow
2. Desegregation in Schools
a. Brown v. Board of Ed.
b. Little Rock 9
c. James Meredith
d. Busing Movement
e. Charles Hamilton Houston
3. Organizations
a. NAACP
b. Urban League
c. SCLC
d. SNCC
e. Black Panthers
f. CORE
4. Leaders
a. Thurgood Marshall
b. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
c. Jo Ann Robinson
d. James Farmer
e. John Lewis
f. Stokely Carmichael
5. Murder Cases
a. Emmitt Till
b. Medgar Evers
c. 16th Baptist Church Bombing
d. Freedom Summer (Mississippi Crisis)
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6. Campaigns
a. Montgomery Bus Boycott
b. Albany Movement
c. Birmingham Campaign
d. Selma Campaign
e. Freedom Summer
7. Events
a. Greensboro Sit-Ins
b. March on Washington
c. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
d. King’s assassination
8. Legislation
a. Civil Rights Act of 1957
b. Executive Order 11063
c. Civil Rights Act 1964
d. Voting Rights Act 1965
e. Civil Rights Act 1968
9. Black Power
a. Black Panther Party
b. Malcolm X
c. 1968 Summer Olympics
d. Nation of Islam
98
Museum Project Rubric
70 points in the
1. The background
poster is relevant
2. The exhibit is
well researched
3. Includes a
variety of items
4. Includes full
coverage of the
topic
5. Content is
accurate and
appropriate
6. Indicates an
understanding of
the content
7. Indicates the
ability to
synthesize
information
8. Includes the
required number
of elements
9. Each group
member appears
to have
participated
10. Docent’s speech
is informative,
thorough, and
accurate.
7
Strong
6
Moder
ately
Strong
5
Average
3
Moderat
ely
Weak
1
Weak
99
Artifact Sheet
Name of Artifact
EX: Little Rock 9
telegram from a
parent to President
Eisenhower
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Civil Rights Term
Little Rock 9
How the Artifact
Represents/Connects to the
Civil Rights Movement
This telegram shows the
fear for the safety of the
Little Rock 9. The Little
Rock 9, nine students who
chose to integrate the allwhite Central High School
in Arkansas in 1957, were
attacked by an angry mob
as they attempted to enter
the school. In a plea to the
president to send troops to
protect the students, this
parent shows how she was
not going to give up the
hope of integration.
100
Montgomery Bus Boycott: Background Essay
The modern civil rights movement in Alabama burst into public consciousness with an
act of civil disobedience by Rosa Parks in Montgomery in 1955. After a 381-day boycott
of city buses, the citizens of Montgomery achieved the victory of integrated public
transportation. After the successful boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. created and led the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the modern civil rights movement
had begun, transforming the state of Alabama and profoundly changing America forever.
Montgomery had the most severe bus segregation laws in the United States. Many other
Jim Crow cities had bus segregation laws where white passengers rode in the front and
black passengers rode in the back; however, the seats were always filled first come-firstserve with white passengers filling in the seats from the front to the back, and black
passengers filling in the bus from the back to the front. Additionally, Montgomery’s laws
gave bus drivers the authority to issue arrests and required black passengers and required
black passengers to pay at the front of the bus, leave, and then re-board at the back
entrance. Black citizens of Montgomery had protested these laws as individuals for
decades by refusing to give up their seat to a white passenger, refusing to re-board the
bus in the back, or talk back to drivers. Many of these individuals who acted as
individual protestors were arrested, beat up, physically removed from the bus and at
times murdered in “self defense” by the driver.
Prior to 1950 black citizens of Montgomery had yet to unite to fight these austere
segregation laws. After professor Jo Ann Robinson at Alabama State College took over
the Women’s Political Council (WPC), a political organization for black women, the
fight to organize the black community to demand an end to the segregation laws started.
Robinson and the WPC petitioned the City Council and the bus company to include more
stops in black neighborhoods fill buses on a first-come-first-serve basis and end the
harassment of bus drivers. After five years of unsuccessful meetings and unmet
demands, Robinson teamed up with the Montgomery chapter president of the NAACP
Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Together Robinson and Nixon interviewed several women
who had been arrested for protesting city buses by refusing to give up their seat for a
white individual, people like Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Sue McDonald and
Mary Louise Smith. Nixon and Robinson were hoping to find a unifying figure the
citizens could rally around to launch a boycott. However, that figure did not arrive until
December 1, 1955.
On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, boarded a
city bus in Montgomery and sat one row behind the whites-only section. The first ten
rows of city buses were exclusively reserved for white passengers. As the bus filled with
passengers, the white driver ordered Parks to surrender her seat to a white man. Parks
101
refused. Her defiance prompted the driver to summon the police, who promptly arrested
her for violating the orders of a city bus driver.
Rosa Parks was a proud member of the NAACP, had attended training on non-violent
resistance, and was a well-respected citizen of Montgomery. The night of her arrest
Robinson and the WPC mimeographed hundreds of fliers indicating a boycott of city
buses the following Monday, December 5th. Approximately 30,000 African Americans
participated in the bus boycott. That night, Reverends Ralph Abernathy and Martin
Luther King, Jr. led a mass meeting to address the protest. With tens of thousands of
black citizens sitting in the audience, the Reverends created the Montgomery
Improvement Association (MIA) and decided to continue the boycott until the city laws
were changed.
Soon after the boycott began, MIA representatives met with Montgomery Mayor W. A.
Gayle and other city leaders and explained that African Americans would not resume
riding the buses until the bus company hired black drivers for routes through black
neighborhoods and instructed white drivers to treat black passengers with courtesy and
professionalism. The City Council quickly dismissed quickly demands. The African
American community, meanwhile, held strong by organizing church taxis, and holding
mass meetings. Acknowledging that laws might not change with a boycott alone, local
black attorney Fred Gray filed a lawsuit in federal court. The lawsuit, known as Browder
v. Gayle, sought a complete end to segregation on the city's buses. As a result, city police
harassed the boycott's supporters, and the White Citizen’s Council targeted the boycott's
leaders with threats of violence and arrest of boycotters.
November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling declaring that
segregation on Montgomery buses was unconstitutional. One month later, African
Americans integrated the city's bus system.
102
Historical Reference (People)
People
Jo Ann Robinson
Fred Gray
E. D. Nixon
Information
In the early 1950s, Robinson and other members of the
Women’s Political Council met with Montgomery mayor
William A. Gayle and several of his staff. The WPC
members found the mayor and his staff responsive to their
request for dialogue on various issues affecting African
Americans in Montgomery until the subject of integrating
the buses arose. Robinson and others wanted drivers to be
more courteous, to stop more frequently in black
neighborhoods, to allow blacks to pay and board the bus at
the front, and to reserve more seats for black patrons. With
little cooperation from the mayor's office, and few African
Americans able to vote in the city, Robinson came to
envision a boycott by the city's many African Americans,
which would severely affect the bus company's finances
and perhaps prompt integration. After Rosa Parks was
arrested on December 1, 1955, Robinson and others saw
their opportunity to take action. She authored the text of a
flyer calling for African Americans to boycott city buses,
starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
After Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her bus seat on
December 1, 1955, the young Gray, who shared lunch with
Parks earlier that day, became her attorney. Despite Gray's
efforts, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct and
violating a civil ordinance. During the famous bus boycott
that followed, Gray served as a legal advisor to the
Montgomery Improvement Association, and he was lead
counsel in Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 case in which the
Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions prohibiting
segregation on city buses. The bus boycott launched
Gray's career, as other civil rights activists and
organizations sought his services
In 1945, he was elected as the president of the
Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and just two
years later became the state president of the organization.
Nixon was politically astute and negotiated successfully
with white city leaders to gain marginal advances in
employment for blacks in city governmental agencies.
During the 1950s, Nixon was instrumental in convincing
103
Rosa Parks
the Montgomery Police Department to hire blacks by
agreeing to support a white candidate who was sympathetic
to the fight for black civil rights. Also around this time,
Nixon began to openly question the segregated seating
restrictions on city buses and the refusal of bus companies
to employ black drivers. He and other members of the
Montgomery branch of the NAACP began to look for a test
case to challenge the legality of Montgomery's segregated
transportation system. When Claudette Colvin was arrested
for refusing to surrender her seat to a white man, Nixon
wondered if the arrest could serve as the case that could
challenge the legality of Alabama's segregated buses.
Nixon consulted with attorney and civil-rights activist Fred
Gray and others to analyze the merits of a case and to
determine if Colvin could stand the scrutiny of being a lead
plaintiff. Nixon decided that Colvin was not mature enough
to handle the pressures associated with such a landmark
case and potentially could cause public relations troubles
because she was pregnant and unmarried. December 1,
1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary for the
NAACP in Montgomery, was arrested for refusing to
surrender her seat to a white man. Nixon was notified of
the arrest, and when he telephoned to inquire about Parks'
arrest, his inquiry was met with racial epithets, and the
police refused to speak with him. Nixon put his house up
as bond collateral for her release. Nixon consulted with
Gray, and other local black leaders, and they decided that
Parks' arrest would serve as the case to challenge the state's
segregation policy in Montgomery. A short time later,
Nixon and a group of Montgomery-area clergy and civic
leaders, including civil-rights leader Ralph Abernathy,
founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)
In the early 1940s, Parks became active in the Montgomery
chapter of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), serving as its secretary and
teaching young people about their rights and
responsibilities as U.S. citizens. Parks participated in a
week-long stay for her at the Highlander Folk School in
Tennessee. The school had been founded in 1932 as a
training facility for social activists, and there Parks learned
effective strategies to protest segregation, including
picketing methods and guidelines for establishing
citizenship training schools to help people pass voting
104
Martin Luther
King, Jr.
tests.
Upon her return, Parks redoubled her commitment to the
civil rights community and its effort to overthrow the Jim
Crow laws that regulated virtually every aspect of African
Americans' lives. On December 1, 1955, Parks' convictions
were put to the test. She boarded a crowded bus after work
and took a seat. When a white man got on and was unable
to find a seat in the whites-only section, Rosa Parks
Arrested the bus driver demanded that Parks and three
other black passengers give up their seats. (All black
passengers were required by law to leave the row, even if
only one white passenger needed a seat.) Parks decided the
time had come to take her stand; she refused to get up, and
at the driver's request two Montgomery police officers
escorted her off the bus and to city hall to be arrested. E.
D. Nixon, former president of the Montgomery NAACP,
bailed her out, and attorney and activist Fred Gray
represented her in the subsequent trial, which resulted in a
$10 fine. Although it was not her intention, Parks' decision
to violate the segregation ordinance triggered a year-long
boycott of Montgomery's buses by the city's black
population and prompted a challenge of the ordinance's
constitutionality in federal court. In December 1956, after
the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a district court's ruling
against segregation in Browder v. Gayle, Parks took a
symbolic first ride near the front of a city bus. The
successful boycott served as an inspiration to black
communities throughout the nation and established Rosa
Parks as the "mother of the civil rights movement."
In 1954 Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a job as the new
pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, located near the
Alabama state capital building in Montgomery. While there
to preach a trial sermon to the congregation, King
befriended the pastor of First Baptist Church, Alabamian
Ralph Abernathy, another future leader of the civil rights
movement. By 1955, King was known in Montgomery and
around the region as a commanding orator with a
passionate but measured delivery. King’s rise to national
prominence began with events in 1955. On December 1,
1955, Montgomery police officers arrested Rosa Parks for
refusing to give her bus seat to a white man. Community
activists elected King as president of the Montgomery
Improvement Association, a group created to organize
105
Ralph Abernathy
protests and a boycott of city buses, most likely because he
was relatively new to the city and had no problematic
allegiances to the various factions within the black
community. The boycott, which lasted more than a year,
ended in December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court
affirmed a lower court's ruling that Alabama's laws
requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional.
King, Abernathy, Parks, her attorney Fred Gray, and others
were among the first to ride on Montgomery's integrated
buses.
Abernathy, who was three years older, served as King’s
mentor in the city's black ministerial community. In
December 1955, Abernathy, King, and several other local
activists created the Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) after fellow activist Rosa Parks was
arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat to a white man
on a city bus. Many civil rights leaders in Montgomery
had been looking for just such a spark to trigger protests
against the harsh segregation rules on public transportation.
Abernathy and other MIA leaders orchestrated a bus
boycott that lasted more than a year and brought national
attention to the MIA members and to civil rights issues in
the South. Abernathy often shared the podium with King
and exhorted the people not to lose faith. "Dr. King's job,"
he remembered years later, "was to interpret the ideology
and theology of non-violence. My job was more simple
and down-to-earth. I would tell them, ‘Don't ride those
buses.'" In January 1957, amid a spate of white violence
following the successful bus boycott, Abernathy's home
and church were heavily damaged by bomb blasts. In
August 1957, Abernathy, King, and several others founded
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC),
which would become the most visible civil rights
organization in the South. King was installed as president
and Abernathy as secretary-treasurer. Abernathy would
later become vice president of the organization and then
ascend to the presidency after King's assassination in 1968.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama
106
Historical Reference (Terms)
Terms
Information
Segregation
Segregation was the legal and social system of separating
(Jim Crow Laws) citizens on the basis of race. The system maintained the
repression of black citizens in Alabama and other southern
states until it was dismantled during the civil rights movement
in the 1950s and 1960s and by subsequent civil rights
legislation. Segregation is usually understood as a legal
system of control consisting of the denial of voting rights, the
maintenance of separate schools, and other forms of
separation between the races, but formal legal rules were only
one part of the regime. Some historians list three other
important elements contributing to the creation and
reinforcement of the status quo: physical force and terror,
economic intimidation, and psychological control exerted
through messages of low worth and negativity transmitted
socially to African American citizens.
Women’s Political Mary Fair Burks founded the Women's Political Council
Council
(WPC) in 1946 to inspire African American women to
become more politically active. The WPC was mainly
comprised of female educators, nurses, teachers and other
professionals. In 1950, Jo Ann Robinson took over the WPC
and made its chief goal to end harassment on city buses. Prior
to Parks’ arrest, the WPC wrote letters to Mayor Gayle
demanding an end to Montgomery’s bus laws. After Parks’
arrest, the WPC mimeographed memos spreading word of the
boycott.
Browder v. Gayle MIA members took up the much larger task of improving race
relations in the city. Working with the NAACP, the
organization also mounted a legal challenge to the city's
segregated buses with Browder v. Gayle, led by NAACP
attorney Fred Gray. That case, which involved civil rights
activist Aurelia Browder bringing suit against Montgomery
mayor W. A. Gayle to integrate the bus system, would be
decided the year following Parks’ arrest. In June 1956,
federal judges Richard Rives and Frank M. Johnson decided
in favor of the MIA in the Browder v. Gayle case, ruling that
segregated seating on city buses was unconstitutional.
Montgomery officials continued to resist integration,
however, and took Browder v. Gayle to the Supreme Court,
which upheld the lower court's ruling in November. After an
almost 13-month-long boycott, Montgomery buses were
107
integrated in December 1956. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther
King, and Ralph Abernathy were among the first passengers
on the newly integrated bus lines.
Montgomery
Improvement
Association
The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was
formed in the days following the December 1955 arrest of
Rosa Parks, to oversee the Montgomery bus boycott. The
organization would play a leading role in fighting segregation
in the city and produce some of the civil rights movement's
most well-known figures. To protest Parks’ arrest, E. D.
Nixon, the local leader of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Jo Ann
Robinson, president of the Women's Political Council,
organized a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses to take
place on Monday, December 5. That evening, a mass meeting
was held at the Holt Street Baptist Church to determine the
future of the boycott. The group members decided they
would continue to boycott the buses and urge others to do so
as well, and organized themselves into the Montgomery
Improvement Association to oversee the boycott. The MIA,
like the boycott itself, was founded on the Christian principles
of nonviolence and kindness toward one's enemies. Local
ministers were given leadership positions in the organization
as well as in the boycott. The members elected as president
26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., pastor of the Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church and a newcomer to Montgomery.
King was chosen for his eloquence and his calm demeanor, as
well as for a more practical consideration; he was largely
unknown to, and would not alarm, most whites in
Montgomery. Although E. D. Nixon was widely recognized
as the de facto leader of Montgomery's black community, he
was instead made treasurer of the MIA, and relations between
him and King would remain tense throughout the boycott.
The MIA regularly held mass meetings at the Holt Street
Baptist Church to pray and to collect donations for gas and
tires for the people who drove the boycotters. Anecdotal
evidence holds that the MIA benefitted from substantial
contributions from whites. The MIA also produced the MIA
Newsletter, which was written by Jo Ann Robinson and was
widely circulated; particularly gripping articles could always
be counted on to bring in a flurry of donations from across the
country. In addition, the MIA formed a delegation to
108
negotiate with the city. Their demands were relatively modest:
courteous treatment by bus drivers, employment of African
Americans as bus drivers, and first-come, first-served seating,
rather than outright integration
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama
109
Historical Analysis Tools
Primary and Secondary Sources
Common Core Standard Reading #6
A primary source is a document or physical object, which was written or created during
the time under study. These sources were present during an experience or time period
and offer an inside view of a particular event. Some types of primary sources include:



ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS (excerpts or translations acceptable): Diaries,
speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, news film footage, autobiographies,
official records
CREATIVE WORKS: Poetry, drama, novels, music, art
RELICS OR ARTIFACTS: Pottery, furniture, clothing, buildings
Examples of primary sources include:





Diary of Anne Frank - Experiences of a Jewish family during WWII
The Constitution of Canada - Canadian History
A journal article reporting NEW research or findings
Weavings and pottery - Native American history
Plato's Republic - Women in Ancient Greece
What is a secondary source?
A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. These sources are one or
more steps removed from the event. Secondary sources may have pictures, quotes or
graphics of primary sources in them. Some types of secondary sources include:
1)
PUBLICATIONS: Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries,
encyclopedias
Examples of secondary sources include:



A journal/magazine article which interprets or reviews previous findings
A history textbook
A book about the effects of WWI
Source: Princeton University
110
Three Levels of Questioning
Common Core Standard Reading #6
Level One Questions:
Readers can point to one correct answer right in the text. Words found in these questions
include:
 defining
 observing
 describing
 naming
 identifying
 reciting
 noting
 listing
Level Two Questions:
Readers infer answers from what the text implicitly states, finding answers in several
places in the text. Words found in these questions include:
 analyzing
 grouping
 synthesizing
 comparing/contrasting
 inferring
 sequencing
Level Three Questions:
Readers think beyond what the text states. Answers are based on reader’s prior
knowledge/experience and will vary. Words found in these questions include:
 evaluating
 judging
 applying a principle
 speculating
 imagining
 predicting
 hypothesizing
Source: Arthur L. Costa, “Teaching for Intelligence: Recognizing and Encouraging
Skillful Thinking and Behavior.” Context Institute (1988).
111
SOAPS
Common Core Standard Reading #6
Have the students complete a SOAPS chart for a specific document, artifact or
photograph
1. Speaker
o Who is the speaker who produced this piece? What is the their
background and why are they making the points they are making? Is
there a bias in what was written?
2. Occasion
o What is the Occasion? The time and place of the piece. What
promoted the author to write this piece? What event led to its
publication or development? It is particularly important that students
understand the context that encouraged the writing to happen.
3. Audience
o Who is the Audience? The group of readers to whom this piece is
directed. The audience may be one person, a small group or a large
group; it may be a certain person or a certain people. What
assumptions can you make about the audience? Is it mixed racial/sex
group? What social class? Political party? Who was the document
created for? Are there any words or phrases that are unusual or
different? Does the speaker use language the specific for a unique
audience? Does he speaker evoke God? Nation? Liberty? History?
Hell? Does the speaker allude to classical themes: the Fates, the
Classical, Pericles, Caesar? Why is the speaker using this type of
language?
4. Purpose
o What is the purpose? The reason behind the text. In what ways does he
convey this message? How would you perceive the speaker giving this
speech? What is the document saying? What is the emotional state of
the speaker? How is the speaker trying to spark a reaction in the
audience? What words or phrases show the speaker’s tone? How is the
document supposed to make you feel? This helps you examine the
argument or its logic.
5. Subject
o What is the subject of the document? The general topic, content, and
ideas contained in the text. How do you know this? How has the
subject been selected and presented? And presented by the author?
112
Document Analysis Worksheet
TYPE OF DOCUMENT (Check one):
Newspaper
Map
Letter
Census Report
Telegram
Memorandum
Advertisement
Press Release
Other
UNIQUE PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DOCUMENT
(Check one or more):
Interesting Letterhead
Notations Handwritten Typed
Stamp
Other
DATE(S)
SealsOF DOCUMENT:
AUTHOR
FOR WHAT AUDIENCE WAS THE DOCUMENT WRITTEN?
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
A. Why do you think this document was written?
B. What evidence in the document helps you know why it was written?
Quote from the document.
C. List two things the document tells you about life in the United States at the time it
was
written.
D. Write a question to the author that is left unanswered by the document:
Source: Designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and Records
Administration, Washington, DC 20408
113
Photo Analysis Worksheet
Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph
and then examine individual items. Next, divide the photo into quadrants and study
each section to see what new details become visible.
Use the spa ce below to list people, objects, and activities in the photograph.
Based on what you have observed above, list three things you might infer from
this photograph.
What questions does this photograph raise in your mind?
Where could you find answers to them?
Source: Designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and
Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408
114
Cartoon Analysis Worksheet
Level 1
Visuals
Words (not all cartoons include words)
1. List the objects or people you see in the
cartoon.
1. Identify the cartoon caption and/
Or title.
2. Locate three words or phrases used
by the cartoonist to identify objects or
people within the cartoon.
3. Record any important dates or
Numbers that appear in the cartoon.
Level 2
Visuals
2. Which of the objects on your list are
symbols?
3. What do you think each symbol means?
Words
4. Which words or phrases in the
cartoon appear to be the most
significant? Why do you think so?
5. List adjectives that describe the
emotions portrayed in the cartoon.
Level 3
A. Describe the action taking place in the cartoon.
B. Explain how the words in the cartoon clarify the symbols.
C. Explain the message of the cartoon.
D. What special interest groups would agree/disagree with the cartoon's message?
Why?
Source: Designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and
Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408
115
Artifact Analysis Worksheet
TYPE OF ARTIFACT
Describe the material from which it was made: bone, pottery, metal, wood, stone,
leather, glass, paper, cardboard, cotton, plastic, other material.
SPECIAL QUALITIES OF THE ARTIFACT
Describe how it looks and feels: shape, color, texture, size, weight, movable parts,
anything printed, stamped or written on it.
USES OF THE ARTIFACT
A. What might it have been used for?
WHAT DOES THE ARTIFACT TELL US?
A. What does it tell us about technology of the time in which it was made and
used?
B. What does it tell us about the life and times of the people who made it and
used it?
C. Can you name a similar item today?
Source: Designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and
Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408
116
Map Analysis Worksheet
TYPE OF MAP (Check one):
Raised Relief map
Bird's-eye map
Topographic map
Artifact map
Political map
Satellite photograph/mosaic
Contour-line
Other
UNIQUE PHYSICAL QUALITIES OF THE
MAP (Check one or more): Compass Name
of mapmaker Handwritten
Title
Date
Scale
DATE OF MAP:
CREATOR OF THE MAP:
WHERE WAS THE MAP PRODUCED?
MAP INFORMATION
A. List three things in this map that you think are important.
1.
2.
3.
B. Why do you think this map was drawn?
C. What evidence in the map suggests why it was drawn?
D. What information does this map add to the textbook's account of this
event?
E. Does the information in this map support or contradict information that
you have read about this event? Explain.
F. Write a question to the mapmaker that is left unanswered by this map.
Source: Designed and developed by the Education Staff, National Archives and
Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408
117
Historical Primary Sources: Photographs, Documents, Interviews
Document Guiding Questions
Common Core Standard Reading #6
Please reference the document number and connect it to the guiding question for further
analysis.
1. Why was the African American population in Montgomery ready to boycott by
December 1955?
2. How did the Montgomery leadership create a community during the boycott?
3. How did the boycott affect Montgomery economically?
4. Why was the boycott successful?
Interview Guiding Questions
**Interviews should be used as supplemental material for teachers and students. They
can also be given as additional background information on individuals, for photographs,
and/or primary source analysis. Teachers can also have students match up interviews
with specific documents and/or photographs. This will teach the students to think about
history in the big picture.**
1. What is the attitude of the person interviewed?
2. How did they contribute to the bus boycott?
3. What did they find challenging about the boycott?
4. How would one individual interviewed (such as Claudette Colvin) feel about
another interviewee (such as E. D. Nixon)? How do you know?
5. Create and answer different levels of questioning for an interviewee.
118
Images
Rosa Parks rides on a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama,
following the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. December 26, 1956.
Montgomery Bus Boycott: Rosa Parks rides on a newly integrated bus in
Montgomery,..." Government, Politics, and Protest: Essential Primary
Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Adrienne
Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale U.S. History In Context.
119
Two months after her initial arrest, Rosa Parks was arrested on new
charges, February 1956.
Smithsonian Museum.
120
Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955
Photo by Arthur Freeman, Collection of Diane Wood. Smithsonian
Museum.
121
Boycotters carpooled, rode “mobile churches” (carpools sponsored by
the church) and rode in taxis to avoid city buses.
Photo by Don Cravens Courtesy Time Life. Pictures/Getty Images.
122
Boycotters riding in a “mobile church.” Transportation provided church
donations.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos. Smithsonian Museum
123
Boycotters were prone to receiving tickets from Montgomery police for
supporting a boycott on a public business, or for operating a taxi without a
license.
Photo by Don Cravens Courtesy Time Life/Getty Images
124
Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in February 1956 for encouraging an illegal
boycott of a public business.
Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Smithsonian Museum.
125
Jo Ann Robinson in her arrest photo for following an illegal boycott of a city
business. February 1956.
Montgomery County Archives.
126
E. D. Nixon sitting for arrest photo for following an illegal boycott of a public
business.
Montgomery County Archives.
127
Documents
1
The Montgomery Advertiser article (December 4, 1955) reporting the start of the
Boycott
128
1
Code of the City of Montgomery, Alabama. Charlottesville: Michie City
Publishing Co., 1952. Alabama Department of Archives and History,
Montgomery, Alabama
129
2
Inez Jessie Baskin Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History,
Montgomery, Alabama.
130
3
Judge Eugene Carter Papers, Box 11, folder 1. Alabama Department of
Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
131
1
Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al;
U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern
(Montgomery) Division Record Group 21: Records of the District Court
of the United States National Archives and Records AdministrationSoutheast Region, East Point, GA.
132
1
Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al;
U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern
(Montgomery) Division Record Group 21: Records of the District
Court of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration-Southeast Region,
East Point, GA.
133
1
Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al;
U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery)
Division Record Group 21: Records of the District Court of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration-Southeast Region, East Point,
GA.
134
1
Civil Case 1147 Browder, et al v. Gayle, et. al;
U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern
(Montgomery) Division Record Group 21: Records of the District Court
of the United States. National Archives and Records AdministrationSoutheast Region, East Point, GA.
135
2
We, [Martin Luther] King and I, went to the meeting together. It was drizzling; I had
been working up until the last minute on the resolutions. I was given instructions: one, to
call off the protest, or two, if indicated, to continue the protest until the grievances were
granted. We had had a successful "one-day protest," but we feared that if we extended it
beyond the first day, we might fail; it might be better after all to call the protest off, and
then we could hold this "one-day boycott" as a threat for future negotiations. However,
we were to determine whether to continue the protest by the size of the crowds....
When we got about twenty blocks from the church we saw cars parked solid... as we got
closer to the church we saw a great mass of people. The Montgomery Advertiser
estimated the crowd at approximately 7,000 persons all trying to get in a church that will
accommodate less than 1,000. It took us about fifteen minutes to work our way through
the crowd by pleading: "Please let us through—-we are Reverend King and Reverend
Abernathy. Please permit us to get through...."
Those inside applauded for at least ten minutes.
It was apparent that the people were with us. It was then that all of the ministers who had
previously refused to take part in the program came up to Reverend King and me to offer
their services. This expression of togetherness on the part of the masses was obviously an
inspiration to the leadership and helped to rid it of the cowardly, submissive, over
timidity.
We began the meeting by singing Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War ....
Mrs. Rosa Parks was presented to the mass meeting because we wanted her to become
symbolic of our protest movement. Following her we presented Mr. Daniels, who happily
for our meeting had been arrested on that day.... The appearance of these persons created
enthusiasm, thereby giving momentum to the movement.
We then heard the resolutions calling for the continuation of the boycott... unanimously
and enthusiastically adopted by the 7,000 individuals both inside and outside the
church....
Ralph Abernathy, "Recollection of the First MIA Mass Meeting," in Daybreak of
Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, ed. Stewart Burns (Chapel Hill, NC: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 93-95; from George Mason University
Center for History and New Media and Stanford University School of Education,
"Rosa Parks," Historical Thinking Matters.
136
Dear Sir:
1
The Women’s Political Council is very grateful to you and the City Commissioners for
the hearing you allowed our representative during the month of March, 1954, when the
“city-bus-fare-increase case” was being reviewed. There were several things the Council
asked for:
1. A city law that would make it possible for Negroes to sit from back toward front, and
whites from front toward back until all the seats are taken.
2. That Negroes not be asked or forced to pay fare at front and go to the rear of the bus to
enter.
3. That busses stop at every corner in residential sections occupied by Negroes as they do
in communities where whites reside.
We are happy to report that busses have begun stopping at more corners now in some
sections where Negroes live than previously. However, the same practices in seating and
boarding the bus continue.
Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If
Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate.
More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to
keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers.
There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide
boycott of busses. We, sir, do not feel that forceful measures are necessary in bargaining
for a convenience which is right for all bus passengers. . . .
Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are
being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses. We do not want this.
Respectfully yours,
The Women’s Political Council
Jo Ann Robinson, President
Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (New York:
Penguin Books, 1991), 44-45; also from Historical Thinking Matters,
137
1
This stuff has been going on for a long time. To tell you the truth,
it's been happening ever since I came here before [World War II].
But here in the last few years they've been getting worse and
worse. When you get on the bus they yell: "Get on back there"...
and half of the time they wouldn't take your transfer, then they
make you get up so white men could sit down [when] there were
no seats in the back. And you know about a year ago they put one
of the high school girls in jail 'cause she wouldn't move. They
should have boycotted the buses then. But we are sure fixing 'em
now and I hope we don't ever start back riding....
They shouldn't make me get up for some white person when I
paid the same fare and I got on first. And they should stop being
so nasty... We pay just like the white folks... [The bus
companies] are the ones losing the money and our preachers say
we will not ride unless they give us what we want...
Excerpt from an interview conducted by Willie Lee (researcher,
Fisk University), January 1956; from George Mason University
Center for History and New Media and Stanford University
School of Education, Historical Thinking Matters.
138
1
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race,
proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and
knives.
We hold these truths to be self evident that all whites are created equal with certain
rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.
In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black
slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. The conduct should not be dwelt upon because
behind them they have an ancestral background of Pigmies, head hunters and snot
suckers.
My friends it is time we wised up to these black devils. I tell you they are a group of two
legged agitators who persist in walking up and down our streets protruding their black
lips. If we don’t stop helping these African flesh eaters, we will soon wake up and find
Rev. King in the White House.
LET’S GET ON THE BALL WHITE CITIZENS.
The Book "Declaration of Segregation" will appear April, 1956. If this appeals to you be
sure to read the book.
Handbill produced by the Central Alabama Citizens Council, February 10, 1956.
Montgomery, Alabama.
139
Rosa Parks, Appellant
4
VS
City of Montgomery, Appellee
Appealed to Court of Appeals of Alabama From: Circuit Court of Montgomery County
Feb. 12, 1957 Affirmed--[illegible signature]
Agreed Stipulation of Facts
Attached hereto and marked Exhibit "A" is a plan of the seating arrangement of the bus
on which the alleged violation occurred. There were thirty-six seats assigned for
passengers. Just prior to the alleged violation by the defendant the ten front seats were
assigned for white persons and the back twenty-six seats were assigned for negroes. The
defendant was sitting on one of the first dual seats immediately behind those occupied by
white passengers and all seats assigned to whites were occupied and all standing room in
that section was taken. Negroes were also standing in the negro section. The evidence is
in dispute as to whether or not there were vacant seats in the negro section. In order to
take on more white passengers who were at that time waiting to board the bus the driver,
the agent in charge, requested the passengers on the row of seats immediately in the rear
of the white section to give up their seats to white passengers. This would have made four
more seats available to whites and under such reassignment the white section would have
been increased to fourteen seats and the negro section decreased to twenty-two seats. The
defendant, a negro, refused to move in accordance with the request of the bus driver, the
agent in charge, and was arrested for such refusal.
The defendant was convicted in the Recorders Court of the City of Montgomery,
Alabama, and appealed to this Court where the case is at issue.
Respectfully submitted,
D. Eugene Loe
Fred D. Gray
Charles D. Langford Feb. 22, 1956
Filed in open court and made a part of record of this case.
Carter, Judge
Excerpt from the brief filed on behalf of Rosa Parks in Parks vs. City of
Montgomery. Filed in the Court of Appeals, Montgomery, Alabama, March 28,
1956. Signed by D. Eugene Loe, attorney for the city of Montgomery, and Fred D.
Gray and Charles D. Langford, attorneys for Rosa Parks
140
2
26 January 1956
Complaint of City of Montgomery Against Martin Luther King, Jr. The King
Institute Stanford.
141
2
At 9:30 P.M., 30 January, a single stick of dynamite exploded on the King family's porch;
Coretta Scott King and a friend, Dexter member Mary Lucy Williams, had been in the
living room when they heard an object land on the front porch. They bolted to the back
room, where King's daughter Yolanda was sleeping, just as the dynamite exploded,
ripping a hole in the porch floor, shattering four windows, and damaging a porch
column. King arrived home about fifteen minutes later to find a large and boisterous
crowd--many apparently armed--gathered outside and refusing to obey police orders to
disperse. When he walked onto the porch, one onlooker reported, “the people let out with
cheers that could be heard blocks away. With the raising of his hand they became quiet to
hear what he had to say.” In his remarks, King asked the crowd to go home peacefully.
Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers and Mayor W A. Gayle addressed the crowd next,
promising to investigate the bombing and to defend the King family against future
attacks. King spoke to the gathering again, urging them to be calm. The crowd then broke
into spontaneous song, including hymns and “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” before finally
dispersing at 10:45 P.M. ” The following comments by King were quoted in the
Montgomery Advertiser article by Joe Azbell published the next day.
“We believe in law and order. Don’t get panicky. Don’t do anything panicky at all. Don’t
get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is
what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you
to love our enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them. I did
not start this boycott. I was asked by you to serve as your spokesman. I want it to be
known the length and breadth of this land that if I am stopped this movement will not
stop. If I am stopped our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are
doing is just. And God is with us.” [quotations from Gayle, Sellers, and Sheriff Mac Sim
Butler omitted]
The Rev. King addressed the crowd again saying “go home and sleep calm. Go home and
don’t worry. 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.”
PD. Montgomery Advertiser, 31 January 1956.
142
To The National City Lines, Inc.
616 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill.
1
Over a period of years the Negro passengers on the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. have
been subjected to humiliation, threats, intimidation, and death through bus driver action.
The Negro has been inconvenienced in the use of the city bus lines by the operators in all
instances in which the bus has been crowded. He has been forced to give up his seat if a
white person has been standing.
Repeated conferences with the bus officials have met with failure. Today a meeting was
held with Mr. J. H. Bagley and Attorney Jack Crenshaw as representatives of the bus
company, and Mayor W. A. Gayle and Associate Commissioners Frank Parks and Clyde
Sellers. At which time as an attempt to end the Monday through Thursday protest, the
following three proposals were made:
1. Courteous treatment by bus drivers.
2. Seating of Negro passengers from rear to front of bus, and white passengers from
front to rear on “first-come-first-serve basis with no seats reserved for any race.
3. Employment of Negro bus operators in predominantly Negro residential sections.
The above proposals, and the resolutions which will follow, were drafted and adopted in
a mass meeting of more than 5,000 regular bus riders. These proposals were denied in
the meeting with the city officials and representatives of the bus company.
Since 44% of the city’s population is Negro, and since 75% of the bus riders are Negro,
we urge you to send a representative to Montgomery to arbitrate.
The Montgomery Improvement Association
The Rev. M. L. King, Pres.
The Rev. U. J. Fields, Sec’y.
TLc. MLW-MBU: Box 6.
8 December 1955 To the National City Lines, Inc. Montgomery, Ala. The King
Institute Stanford University.
143
1
2 December 1955 Leaflet, “Don’t Ride the Bus,” Come to a Mass Meeting on 5
December. The King Institute Stanford University.
144
2
This is a historic week because segregation on buses has now been declared
unconstitutional. Within a few days the Supreme Court Mandate will reach Montgomery
and you will be reboarding integrated buses. This places upon us all a tremendous
responsibility of maintaining, in face of what could be some unpleasantness, a calm and
loving dignity befitting good citizens
and members of our Race. If there is violence in word or deed it must not be our people
who commit it.
For your help and convenience the following suggestions are made. Will you read, study
and memorize them so that our non-violent determination may not be endangered. First,
some general suggestions:
1. Not all white people are opposed to integrated buses. Accept goodwill on the part of
many.
2. The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.
3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action as
you enter the bus.
4. Demonstrate the calm dignity of our Montgomery people in your actions.
5. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior.
6. Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the
South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
7. Be quiet but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
8. Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a
friend.
Now for some specific suggestions:
1. The bus driver is in charge of the bus and has been instructed to obey the law. Assume
that he will cooperate in helping you occupy any vacant seat.
2. Do not deliberately sit by a white person, unless there is no other seat.
145
3. In sitting down by a person, white or colored, say "May I" or "Pardon me" as you sit.
This is a common courtesy.
4. If cursed, do not curse back. If pushed, do not push back. If struck, do not strike back,
but evidence love and goodwill at all times.
5. In case of an incident, talk as little as possible, and always in a quiet tone. Do not get
up from your seat! Report all serious incidents to the bus driver.
6. For the first few days try to get on the bus with a friend in whose non-violence you
have confidence. You can uphold one another by glance or prayer.
7. If another person is being molested, do not arise to go to his defense, but pray for the
oppressor and use moral and spiritual forces to carry on the struggle for justice.
8. According to your own ability and personality, do not be afraid to experiment with
new and creative techniques for achieving reconciliation and social change.
9. If you feel you cannot take it, walk for another week or two. We have confidence in
our people.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
THE MONTGOMERY IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
The Rev. M. L. King, Jr., President
The Rev. W. J. Powell, Secretary
Inez Jessie Baskin Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History,
Montgomery, Alabama, http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec55ps.html.
146
2
A group of 18 persons met at the Mt. Zion A.M.E. Zion Church at 3 P.M.
Officers were elected:






Chairman—Rev. M. L. King
Vice Chairman—Rev. Roy Bennett
Recording Sec.—Rev. U. J. Fields
Corresponding Sec.—Rev. E. N. French
Financial Sec.—Mrs. Erna Dungee
Treasurer—E. D. Nixon
The Montgomery Improvement Association
Moved and second that the 16 persons here and a suggestion that 9 names be brought in
making 25 which constitute the Executive Committee
It was recommended that resolutions would be drawned up. Resolution Committee
 Rev. Abernathy Chairman
 Rev Alford
 Mr Gray
 Mr. Nixon
 Rev. Glasco
The president, Rev. M. L. King, attorney Gray and attorney Langford is on the
committee. The program would be tape recorded at its Holt Street Baptist Church. It was
agreed that the protest be continued until conditions are improved.It was passed that the
recommendations from the committee be given to the citizens at the night meeting.
Opening Hymn Onward Christian Soldier
1. Prayer—Rev Alford
2. Scripture Rev. Fields
3. Occassion—Rev. King
Presentation of Mrs. Parks—Rev. French
Fred [Daniels]
4. Resolutions—Rev. Abernathy
Vote on Recomendations
5. Offering—Rev Bonner
6. Closing Hymn—My Country Tis of Thee
7. Benediction—Rev. Roy Bennett
5 December 1955. Minutes of Montgomery Improvement Association Founding
Meeting, by U.J. Fields. Montgomery, Ala. The King Institute Stanford University.
147
Interviews
Claudette Colvin
By Sebastian Kitchen
Montgomery Advertiser
Claudette Colvin could be a common name in every modern U.S. history book, but the
protest of another woman nine months later became the rallying cry for the Montgomery
Bus Boycott.
Colvin, then a 15-year old student at Booker T. Washington, was arrested for her refusal
to give up a bus seat in 1955, but it was another woman and another arrest nine months
later that would capture people's attention and be noted in modern American history
books.
Colvin was arrested in March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat.
"She made something out of what I started," Colvin said.
Colvin feels her disobedience was the spark for much of the movement's fire.
"I can look and say that it spread," she said.
Many civil rights leaders believe the boycott and Parks as people know them today may
have been completely different without Colvin's actions.
While Parks is well known for her refusal to move in December 1955, Colvin is largely
unknown, not even a footnote in most history books.
And while Parks is associated with the boycott and the desegregation of buses, it was four
other women that were the plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that desegregated
buses.
Colvin was a plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit that desegregated buses. Parks was
not.
Civil rights attorney Fred Gray always discusses Colvin when he speaks about the
boycott and about Parks. He points out the boycott and its place in history would have
been vastly different without Colvin's action.
148
People including Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum, and
Gray note Colvin was a part of the case that changed the law.
She is one of two living women who were plaintiffs from the lawsuit including Mary
Louise Smith. Even though Smith continues to live in Montgomery, she much like
Colvin, has received little recognition for her action.
Colvin will be recognized in the addition to the museum, which will be completed for the
50th anniversary. There will be a photo of her and a description of her role in the civil
rights movement. There is little recognition of her in the current museum.
Colvin, now 66 and retired, said she is not angry, but she is disappointed. She does not
know why more effort was not made to tell her story.
"I feel like I am getting my Christmas in January rather than the 25th," Colvin said.
When the 25th anniversary of the boycott arrived, she expected the four plaintiffs from
the lawsuit to be recognized.
"We were the ones who ended it," Colvin said of segregation on buses. "They didn't'
mention us."
Colvin said her civil disobedience in 1955 came soon after studying her heritage in
school and hearing teachers talk about the injustices against African Americans,
including the Jim Crow laws. She was inspired and supported by two teachers.
"I guess I was the only one who took it seriously," Colvin said.
Nobody had ever needed to ask Colvin to move before that day in March 1955. She was
quiet and followed the laws of society, even though they may not have been written laws.
Nothing specific prompted her to refuse to move that day, to remain in her seat as the bus
continued to fill with white riders.
"I just said I am not going to take this any more," Colvin said. "I was not breaking the
law."
She said her books were thrown from the bus and two officers, each grabbing an arm,
dragged her off of the bus.
"I told them it was my constitutional right," Colvin said. "I paid my fare."
She was taken to City Hall in a police car, was booked and placed in the adult jail.
149
Neighbors, fellow students and others in the community began to think of Colvin as a
troublemaker, she said.
"They distanced themselves from me," Colvin said of fellow students. "They didn't want
to be close to me because of my beliefs."
She is proud she acted and proud she disobeyed.
Colvin also realizes it was just a matter of time before someone acted.
"The revolution was already here," she said. "If it wasn't me, it would have been
somebody."
Colvin, who was in her teens, pregnant within months of the arrest and subsequently
dropped out of school, was not chosen as the test case challenging segregation on city
buses.
"That's why they chose not to use me as the test case," she said.
Colvin said they wanted Parks to be the icon, but she is glad she acted.
"She did what she had to do and made something of it," she said.
150
Rosa Parks
By Jannell McGrew
Montgomery Advertiser
December 1, 2000
When ordered by bus driver James F. Blake that she must yield her seat in the first row of
the black section of a Montgomery bus to a white man, Parks, then 42, said no.
"God sat with me," Parks said this week, "as I remained calm and determined not to be
treated with less dignity than any other citizen of Montgomery."
She was arrested, fingerprinted, put behind bars, then bailed out. Others had been arrested
for defying the segregation laws, so Parks' arrest garnered little attention from many in
Montgomery - including this newspaper, which gave it a scant five paragraphs next to a
jewelry store ad at the bottom of an inside page.
But this was different. Parks was a respected, well-regarded black laborer who worked
for a downtown department store. She had many white friends, who didn't peg her a
troublemaker, someone looking to cause a ruckus or make a stand.
Perhaps that's why Parks caused the first domino to fall in a long line that led to the
demise of laws that kept blacks at the back of the bus.
Her arrest caused the civil rights movement to move. It brought to the forefront a young
Montgomery preacher, the Rev. Martin Luther King, who would go on to galvanize the
nation. And the boycott of the bus system that followed showed how non-violence and
solidarity could be effective against oppression.
It's been said that Parks shrugs her shoulders when she's called "the mother of the civil
rights movement." But she cannot dispute this: Her decision to stay in her seat on that
December day was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow.
"Back then," Parks said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, "we didn't have any
civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I
remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching
and being afraid the house would burn down."
After attending Alabama State Teachers College, now Alabama State University, she
married Raymond Parks in 1932 and made a home in Montgomery. Few are aware that
both Parks - husband and wife - were active in many early struggles for equality.
151
"Self taught with minimal formal education, Raymond (her husband) was a skilled
barber. Rosa, a domestic worker and seamstress, finished high school after her marriage
to Raymond," the institute's history reads. "They both encouraged others to register to
vote, pool their financial resources, advocate for quality formal education and become
involved in community development."
Douglas Brinkley, author of a recently released biography, "Rosa Parks," and a history
professor at the University of New Orleans, said the couple worked together to gain
rights for blacks.
"It was Raymond who helped trigger Rosa Parks' commitment to fighting social injustice
through the NAACP," Brinkley said.
In 1943, Rosa Parks became one of the first women to join Montgomery's chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
That same year, she worked with the NAACP's state president, E.D. Nixon, to mobilize a
voter registration drive in Montgomery and was elected secretary of the Montgomery
branch, a post she held until 1956.
"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Parks said, "but we did not get the
publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder and rape. We didn't seem to
have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be
and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens.
"...No one enjoyed segregation, but it had to be tolerated. I helped train the youth of the
NAACP to peacefully protest segregation in the Montgomery Public Library." Becoming
a legend
Popular legend has it that when Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man 45 years
ago, she was tired and weary from a long day of work. The tale - told and retold countless
times as the movement took hold - painted a vivid picture.
But was she tired because of her job that day? Or was she tired of subjecting herself to
segregation - and knew if she defied the law, she would be arrested?
"Rosa Parks was physically tired but no more than anyone else after a long day of
working," she said. "But what she was really 'sick and tired' of was the unfair treatment
of blacks throughout the South.
"She was just tired of taking this, and she just said, 'I'm not going to take any more,'"
Lowery said.
152
The NAACP, eager for the movement to take hold, capitalized on the "tired" reference to
gain support, Brinkley said.
"After Rosa Parks was arrested and the boycott began, the NAACP was dogged in its
effort to showcase Rosa Parks as being the tired seamstress in every woman - a woman
whose feet were tired one day and refused to give up her bus seat," he said.
"In order for the NAACP to get money for the movement, they had to make sure she
wasn't seen as a communist or socialist or some anti-American troublemaker. They went
out of their way to downplay Rosa Parks' 30-year commitment to civil rights."
But Parks has said numerous times that she was weary of the treatment she and other
blacks received every day of their lives.
"Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it," writes Parks in one of her
books.
"I kept thinking about my mother and my grandparents and how strong they were. I knew
there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to
do what I had asked of others."
Before her arrest, Parks often showed her distaste for segregation in her own quiet way.
She walked up the stairs of buildings, for instance, rather than riding an elevator marked
"blacks only."
Brinkley said the thought that her arrest was a purely spontaneous event "has cheated her
out of her true historic role as one of the most prominent grass-roots activists of our
century.
"They wanted to make her into a mythological figure beyond reproach, and they
succeeded," he said.
Robert Nesbitt, 91, was a deacon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the congregation led
by the Rev. King, at the time of Parks' arrest. He said he clearly recalls the events
surrounding the boycott.
"When E.D. Nixon went and bonded her out, we had meetings about it. We decided that
we would not ride the buses and that we would boycott," Nesbitt said. "We (later)
decided to boycott the buses until our demands were met."
The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by King, called for a boycott of the cityowned bus company. The boycott lasted 381 days and brought Parks, King and their
cause to the attention of the world.
153
The boycott drew to a close shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the
Montgomery ordinance that caused Parks' arrest, thus outlawing racial segregation on
public transportation in the city and throughout the South.
"One could say that Mrs. Parks' refusal to surrender her seat ... created an ever widening
ripple of change throughout the world," said civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who served
as Parks' lawyer. "The quiet exemplification of courage, dignity and determination
mobilized people of various philosophies."
Brinkley said, however, he does not believe Parks was chosen by anyone to challenge the
system.
"The bottom line is nobody chose her," Brinkley said. "She did not wake up that morning
saying, "OK, I am going to get arrested. But a lifetime of injustice had brought her to that
breakdown point. She had been aware that there was a movement afoot to integrate the
bus transportation system."
"She has always been her own woman," he added. "She's never been scripted by anybody
to do what she did."
Historian Gwendolyn Patton of Montgomery said, "Mrs. Parks' refusal to get out of her
seat was the straw that broke the camel's back.
"And the movement that ensued, the Montgomery bus boycott movement, and the people
were the straws that finally broke the back of Jim Crow."
Parks, responding in writing to questions submitted by the Montgomery Advertiser, also
said her arrest was not a planned event.
"There is no way anyone could have planned that day," Parks said.
"But throughout the community organizations in Montgomery, we had been planning for
freedom all of our lives." Parks' legacy continues
154
Fred Gray Sr.
By Jannell McGrew
Montgomery Advertiser
When now famous civil rights attorney Fred Gray Sr. decided to be a lawyer, the first
thing he wanted to do was "tear down everything segregated I could find."
Gray not only was the attorney for Rosa Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- he
was their friend. He continues his work in civil rights today and at age 74, he continues
his work in arguing court cases. But it was Montgomery's segregated buses that would be
his proving ground.
"The bus situation and how our people were treated on buses bothered me," Gray said.
"While I didn't have any direct altercations with anybody, I had seen many people who
had, and when I looked around and realized that everything in Montgomery was
completely segregated ... I just concluded there was something wrong about all of that."
Gray's route to the halls of justice was a roundabout one.
Before he began studying law and learning the art of arguing a case in a courtroom, he
investigated another, more spiritual path.
When Gray was 12, he left his native Montgomery and traveled to Tennessee to attend
the Nashville Christian Institute. He was such an apt pupil that Marshall Keeble, the
school president, selected him to help raise funds and recruit students.
He traveled around with Keeble all over the country as a boy preacher, "as a specimen of
what the school produces," Gray recalled.
He returned to his hometown with the hopes of doing ministry work or becoming a
teacher - "two safe positions or professions for African Americans in the 1940s and early
1950s," he noted.
But something happened to alter his course -- the Jim Crow law, especially as it was
imposed on the Montgomery bus system.
Not only did blacks have to sit in the rear of buses, they had to pay their fare in the front
then get out and walk around to the back of the bus to get in. Many blacks were
mistreated by bus drivers who allowed them to pay, then drove off without letting them
get on after they had stepped out to walk to the back. By many in the black community, it
was called simply the "bus situation."
155
The "bus situation" could best be confronted, Gray soon concluded, in the courtroom
rather than in the sanctuary.
Gray credits Montgomery resident Thelma Glass, another boycott supporter, for helping
him chart the course to law school.
So did E.D. Nixon, whom Gray often describes as "Mr. Civil Rights," and Alabama State
University professor J.E. Pierce.
Gray decided in his junior year of college to pursue a career in law. Gray couldn't attend
the then-segregated University of Alabama, although he later would argue a case that
opened the doors once closed to him.
When he got ready to go to law school, Glass recommended him to go to Case Western
Reserve University in Cleveland, Glass said.
So he headed to Cleveland. To help pay for school, he worked at "any job that was
available," Gray said, from button factories to dry cleaners. At Case Western, he said, he
studied the ins and outs of Alabama law, even crafting his papers around the subject.
When he returned to Montgomery, he said, he wanted to be ready for the state's judicial
system.
"Secretly I said to myself, 'I'm going to come back (to Montgomery) and begin
destroying everything segregated I can,'" Gray recalled. "That was my commitment, my
secret commitment, and I didn't tell anybody about that for 35 years."
He was admitted to the Ohio bar association in 1954 and to his home state's bar the same
year.
The following year, he got his chance to battle segregation. When Parks was arrested,
Gray already had been the attorney for Claudette Colvin, who had been arrested a few
months earlier under similar circumstances.
"That was the young lady who really gave all of us the courage to do what we later did
when Mrs. Parks" refused to give up her seat, Gray said.
Gray's commitment to winning civil rights cases didn't end with the bus boycott. He sued
on behalf of the participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and helped overcome Gov.
George Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door.
156
Jo Ann Robinson
Conducted by PBS
Llew Smith: THE FIRST IS THE WEEKEND OF THE BOYCOTT, AND HOW
PEOPLE—DID YOU REALLY BELIEVE ONCE THE LEAFLETS HAD BEEN SENT
OUT THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A BOYCOTT?
Jo Ann Robinson: I was a part of it, I knew there was going to be a boycott.
Llew Smith: THAT'S LESS THAN 30 SECONDS.
[laughter] [unintelligible] Jo Ann Robinson: I was the President of the Women's Council
and we had prepared for this. [laughter]
Llew Smith: OK, HOW ABOUT THE WOMEN'S POLITICAL COUNCIL?
Jo Ann Robinson: The Women's Political Council was an organization that had begun in
1946, after just dozens of black people had been arrested on the buses for segregation
purposes. And at that time, the black woman and the white man were the freest people in
the southern states. And we knew that if something hadn't been done by the women there
wouldn't be anything done. And we had sat down and… and witnessed the arrests and
humiliation and the court trials and fines paid, ah, people who just sat down on an empty
seat. And so we knew something had to be done. We organized the Women's Council,
and oh, within a month's time we had over a hundred members. We organized a second
chapter and a third, so we had more than 300 members in that organization. We had
members in every elementary, junior high and senior high school. We had them
organized from federal and…and state and um, local jobs, wherever there were more than
10 blacks employed we had a member there and we were organized to the point that we
knew that in a matter of hours we could corral the whole city.
Llew Smith: WHEN YOU LOOK BACK IN HISTORY, IT LOOKS LIKE THE
BOYCOTT WAS A SPONTANEOUS ACT PROVOKED BY THE ARREST OF ROSA
PARKS. WAS IT?
Jo Ann Robinson: It was a spontaneous act from those persons who were not members of
the Women's Political Council. But we had worked for at least three years getting that
thing organized. The night that the—the night of the evening that Rosa Parks was
arrested, Fred Gray called me and told me she was arrested, she had somebody going her
bail, but her case would be on Monday, and I as President of the main body of the
Women's Political Council got on the phone and I called all the officers of the three
chapters. I called as many of the men who had supported us as possible and I told them
that Rosa Parks had been arrested and she would be tried. They said, you have the plans,
put them into operation. I called every person who was in every school and everyplace
where we had planned to be at that house…have somebody at that school or wherever it
was at a certain time that I would be there with materials for them to disseminate. I didn't
go to bed that night. I cut those stencils. I ran off 35,000 of the little foyer that you ah,
157
have. And I distributed them. I had classes from 8:00 to 10:00 at the college. And at
10:00 I had two senior students who had agreed to go with me. I took them in my car.
The packages were already there. It would take about a half a minute to drive on the
school campus, the kid would be there, in just a minute they would disappear.
Llew Smith: THE MINISTERS WERE MEETING AT THE SAME TIME?
Jo Ann Robinson: The ministers were—ah, not at 10:00. The ministers were meeting that
afternoon, or sometime during the day on um High…High Street. They were having the
International Ministerial ah…Association Meeting. And ah, after we had ah, circulated
those ah, 35,000 circulars, then we went by the church. That was about 3:30 in the
afternoon and we took them to the ministers. And it was there that they learned there was
to be a boycott and they agreed to meet at Dr. King's Church, Dexter Avenue, that night
to decide what should be done about the boycott after the first day. You see the Women's
Council planned it only for Monday, and it was left up to the men to take over after we
had forced them really to decide whether or not it had been successful enough to
continue, and how long it was to be continued.
Llew Smith: HOW DID MOST PEOPLE FOUND OUT ABOUT IT? THE LEAFLETS
WERE DISTRIBUTED—DID THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES—?
Jo Ann Robinson: We, we had just everything in our favor, because we distributed the
35,000 copies and most of the people got the message, but there were outlying areas that
didn't get it. And one lone black woman who was so faithful to her white lady as she
called it, went back to work and took one of the…the circulars to this woman so she
would know what the blacks had planned. When the woman got it, she immediately
called the media, and then following that, the television, the radios, and news…and
evening newspapers, everybody told those persons whom we had not reached, that there
would be the boycott. So the dye was cast.
Llew Smith: HOW DID THEY GET OUT TO PEOPLE?
Jo Ann Robinson: Ohhh. I mentioned that. I guess I wasn't clear. I took them to school
with me in my car, after I had talked with every member in the elementary, junior high
and senior high schools to have somebody on the campus that I would be there at a
certain time during the day and deliver them. I taught my classes from 8:00 to 10:00. I
was free from 10:00 to 2:00, and when my 10:00 o'clock class was over, I took two senior
students with me and I had them in my car, bundled and ready to be given out. And I
would drive to the place of dissemination. A kid would be there to grab them, disappear.
And I was on the campus and off, or in the front of the place or wherever it was, before
anybody knew that I was there. I delivered them in my car, yeah.
Llew Smith: MONDAY, THE DECISION IS MADE TO CONTINUE THE BOYCOTT.
Jo Ann Robinson: Monday night, the ministers held their meeting at Holt Street Baptist
church, and they voted ah, unanimously to continue the boycott. And instead of it lasting
one day as the Women's Council had planned it, it lasted for 13 months.
158
Llew Smith: WHAT KEPT IT GOING?
Jo Ann Robinson: The spirit, the desire, the injustices that had been endured by thousands
of people through the years. I think that people were fed up, they had reached the point
that they knew there was no return, that they had to do it or die. And that's what kept it
going. It was the sheer spirit for freedom, for the feeling of being a man and a woman.
Llew Smith: THERE MUST HAVE BEEN SOME MOMENTS IN THOSE 13 MONTHS
WHEN THE PRESSURE TO BREAK WAS ENORMOUS.
Jo Ann Robinson: Well, I never reached a point where I was sorry. I reached a point
where I was scared. They broke—the police broke out my picture window.
They…they…the man next door trailed them downtown and Mr. Sellers, who was the
fellows who was the Police Commissioner asked that man if he wanted to live when he
followed the police and told them that they had broken out my window. And when the
man said yes, he wanted to live, he said, but you go home and check your files. They got
away with it. They broke my window. And not too long after that, I had a…a carport, and
I had my car…it was the new Chrysler parked under that carport. I'd never turn my lights
on until I went to bed. I sat up there in the dark, and many of the people from the college
sat with me, because they knew I'd been getting a lot of threatening calls. But that
particular night, about two weeks after they had broken my picture window, I heard a
noise on the side where my car was, and I went and looked out the window in the dark,
and there were two policemen scattering something on the top of my car, on the hood of
the car. I didn't know what it was. I saw them when they went back and got in their car
and drove away. The next morning my car was eaten up with acid. I had holes as large as
a dollar, all over the…the…the top of the car, all over the hood, or the motor, and the side
of the car, and at first I thought it was a terrible tragedy, but it became to mean a great
significance to me. And I did say, I will say, that after that, it was reported to the
Governor, and Mr. Folsom, then put a State Highway Patrolman on my house, just as he
had Dr. King, Rev. Abernathy and Mr. Nixon, and that patrol car guarded my house until
the boycott was over. It was frightening. That there were many whites who were with us
all the way. I used to drive until 12:00 at night in my car, and many times there were
white women driving, going to the parking lot, you know about the parking lot downtown
where it served as the interchange for different directions. And those women were
driving, pick those people up. Now at one time when I would get up at maybe 5:00 or
6:00 in the morning and start driving that I would run into whites with blacks and I
thought they were picking up their maids or those persons who were working for them.
But it turned out that they were there helping those people to get where they were going.
So I would have to say that there were many sympathetic whites who knew that the
system was wrong and they were doing what they could to help to correct it.
Llew Smith: BUT WHEN IT CAME WAS THERE A COMMUNITY MEETING TO
GET READY AND —?
Jo Ann Robinson: And rejoicing and ah, I told you so's, and the happiness of 13 weary
159
months coming to light again. Yes, that was ah, a meeting, and I might mention—Yes,
that ah, we did meet after the news came through. And all of these people who had fought
for 13 months got together to…to communicate and to rejoice and to share that ah, built
up emotion and all of the other feelings that they had lived with during the, the past 13
months. And we just rejoiced together.
Llew Smith: E. D. NIXON.
Jo Ann Robinson: E. D. Nixon was one of the few black men who was not afraid in
Montgomery. When I went to Alabama State in '49, E. D. Nixon had an organization.
And ah, it tried, but there were very few people who worked with him for various reasons
of which I cannot state. But ah, his organization, though he protested individually, it
didn't have too much power behind it because it was small in number. Mr. Lewis also had
an organization, the Citizen's Council, but the following was not great enough to be of
too much of a threat.
160
Additional Montgomery Bus Boycott Web Sources
The Montgomery Advisor Website:
http://www.montgomeryboycott.com/
Holt Labor Library
http://www.holtlaborlibrary.org/BusBoycott.htm
Alabama State Archives
http://www.archives.alabama.gov/teacher/rights/rights1.html
King Research Institute, Stanford
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/02_bus.html
Alabama Department of Archives and History
http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec55.html
Troy University
http://montgomery.troy.edu/rosaparks/museum/boycott.html
Independence Hall Association
http://www.ushistory.org/us/54b.asp
City University New York
http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1834
161
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