Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 29
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Started December 1, 1955
Montgomery, Alabama
They would boycott the city
buses until they could sit
anywhere they wanted
Rosa Parks
Thursday, December 1, 1955
Sat in fifth row
She was arrested
E.D. Nixon, Lawyer
Jo Ann Robinson
 Put plans for a one-day boycott into
action
 Mimeographed handouts urging
blacks to stay off the city buses on
Monday
 Group of ministers and civil rights
leaders held a meeting
Martin Luther King, Jr
Bus after empty bus rolled past his
house
Group met again and called
themselves the Montgomery
Improvement Association (MIA)
Should we extend the boycott
MIA
The boycott would continue
Day four MIA leaders met with bus
company and city officials
Bus company refused the
compromise
City officials came back with
Boycott
 MIA worked out a “private taxi” plan
 Whites tried to end the boycott in
every way possible.
 One technique – divide the black
community
 Effort to break up the boycott failed
Boycott
 Whites then turned to violence
 Bombed King’s home on January 30
and Nixon’s home on February 1
 Whites turned to the law
 Whites tried to break down the “private
taxi” system
Boycott
Despite all the pressures to end the
boycott, blacks continued to stay
off the buses.
It was costing the business
community thousands of dollars
Boycott
Blacks would only accept full
integration
Help from Brown v Board of
Education which said that “separate
but equal” doctrine had no place in
public education
Boycott
Common sense the court would
rule the same for public facilities
Plus these battles are being fought
in Federal court not local courts
November 13, 1956 – Supreme
Court upheld the federal court’s
ruling
Boycott
 S.C. declared segregation on buses
unconstitutional
 Montgomery Bus Boycott was
officially over
 But they still faced challenges – getting
shot at, houses being bombed, ect.
Sit-Ins
First one – February 1, 1960 at a
F.W. Woolworth Company store in
Greensboro, North Carolina
4 black college students sat at a
whites only lunch counter
Sit-Ins
A larger group of students
returned the next day
Wire services had picked up the
story
Civil rights organizations began to
spread the word
Sit-Ins
 Basic Plan – a group of students would go
to a lunch counter and ask to be served
 If served they would move on to the next
 If not – would not move until they had
been
 If arrested – a new group would take over
Sit-Ins
 “Do’s” and “Don’t”
 Show yourself friendly at all times
 Sit straight and always face the counter
 Don’t strike back, or curse or laugh out
 Don’t hold conversations
 Don’t block entrances
Sit-Ins
Were dressed in their best Sunday
clothing
Northern students heard of the
movement and decided to help and
picketed local branches of chain
stores
Sit-Ins
 February 27, in Nashville were attacked
 Police arrived and let the white teens
go while arresting the protesters for
“disorderly conduct”
 Lawyer Z. Alexander Looby – he began
his arguments the judge turned his back
Sit-Ins
 Protesters were found guilty and fined
$150 plus court costs
 April 19 – Looby’s home was blown up
 Because he was so well respected by
everybody so everybody was enraged
 May 10 – 6 Nachville lunch counters
began serving blacks
Sit-Ins
By August 1961, they had
attracted over 70,000
participants and generated over
3,000 arrests
Sit-Ins
The Freedom Riders
 Strategy – an interracial group would
board buses destined for the south
 Whites in the back and blacks in the
front
 At rest stops – whites would go into
blacks-only areas and vice versa
The Freedom Riders
Left Washington DC on May
4,1961
Was to arrive in New Orleans on
May 17
But on Mother’s Day, May 14 the
Freedom Riders split up into two
groups to travel through Alabama
The Freedom Riders
 The first group was met by a mob of
about 200 angry people in Anniston.
 They stoned the bus and slashed the
tires
 Bus managed to get away and stopped
6 miles out of town to change the tires
Freedom Riders
There it was firebombed
The second bus ran into a mob
in Birmingham
Riders were severely beaten
They were determined to
continue
Freedom Riders
The bus company did not want
to continue
2 days they negotiated
Freedom Riders flew to New
Orleans
Freedom Riders
 Sit-In students in Nashville decided to
go to Birmingham
 Attorney General Kennedy leaned on
the bus company and the police
 May 17 the police arrested the
Nashville Freedom Riders and placed
them in protective custody
Freedom Riders
 Police took the students to the state
line
 Students went right back to
Birmingham
 Meeting – Governor, Justice
Department aide, head of the state
highway patrol, and Attorney General
Freedom Riders
Results – Police will protect
the Freedom Riders
Greyhound Busses would carry
the Riders – from Birmingham
to Montgomery
Freedom Riders
 Entered Montgomery city limits the
police disappeared
 Bus terminal – many whites showed up
 Jim Zwerg, a white rider, got off the
bus first
 The crowd started beating him
Freedom Riders
As other riders got off they
started to get beat
Some there watching tried to
stop the beatings but they
would get pounced on
Freedom Riders
King flew to Montgomery and
held a mass meeting in a church
A mob surrounds the church
King called Kennedy and they
all were able to leave safely
Freedom Riders
Kennedy then asks for a
cooling-off period
Freedom Riders said no
Continued on to Mississippi
At Jackson – no violence but
were arrested
Freedom Riders
Kennedy and Mississippi Governor
reached an agreement
May 25 the Freedom Riders are
tried
Sentenced to 60 days in the state
penitentiary
Freedom Riders
More Riders arrived to continue
They were arrested
More arrived – more arrested
By the end of the summer more
than 300 had been arrested
Freedom Riders
Never made it to New Orleans
But they forced the Kennedy
Administration to take a stand
on civil rights
Freedom Riders
Birmingham
 Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham
invited King to come visit
 Birmingham was called “Bombingham”
because there were 18 unsolved
bombings in black neighborhoods over
a six-year span
Birmingham
18 unsolved bombings in black
neighborhoods over a six-year span
April 6 police arrested 45
protesters
Next day – Palm Sunday – more
protesters are arrested
Birmingham
Judge issued an order
preventing organized
demonstrations
Everyone knew that Martin
Luther King, Jr. was to be
arrested next
Birmingham
 King ended up getting arrested and was
put into solitary confinement for 8 days
 Civil rights leaders then organized the
children
 May 2, 50 teenagers started marching
towards downtown
Birmingham
Were arrested and placed in
police vans
Another group left the church
and they were put in vans
Birmingham
And then another group until
they had to start loading school
busses because all the vans were
full
Three hours later 959 children
were in jail
Birmingham
The next day over a thousand more
children stayed out of school and
went to march
Since there was no more room in
the jails firefighters were called and
ordered to turn hoses on the
children
Birmingham
Some refused to budge so they
turned even more powerful
hoses on them
So strong was the stream that it
broke bones and rolled
protesters down the street
Birmingham
The nation was shocked when
they saw the pictures
The Birmingham business
community agreed to integrate
lunch counters
Civil Rights movement in
Birmingham
March on Washington
 After Birmingham, President
Kennedy proposed a new civil rights
bill
 To show that the bill had widespread
support the civil rights groups
organized a march
March on Washington
 Organizers hoped to draw a crowd of
100,000
 Instead over 250,000 people from
around the nation
 Arrived in more than 30 special trains
 2,000 chartered buses
March on Washington
Descended on Washington, DC
on August 28, 1963
Famous “I Have a Dream”
speech
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
 In the 60’s Mississippi was the poorest
state in the nation
 Had a terrible voting rights violations
 Mississippi was 45% black
 But only 5% of voting age blacks were
registered
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
 NAACP went to Mississippi to try and
register more blacks
 Marion Barry started workshops to
teach young blacks nonviolent protest
methods
 Young black people volunteered to help
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
 Began by holding sit-ins – arrested and
expelled from school
 Met with violence – sprayed with paint
and had pepper thrown in their eyes
 Medgar Evers’ home was bombed
 Students who protested this were
beaten
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
Medgar Evers a native of
Mississippi and a World War II
veteran
Medger Evers
Council of Federated Organization
(COFO)
Organized the Freedom Vote
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
Two main goals
To show Mississippi whites and the
nation that blacks wanted to vote
To give blacks practice in casting a
ballot
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
Suring the summer of 1964 they
held a voter registration drive
Known as Freedom Summer
800 volunteers gathered for a
week-long orientation
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
June 21, the day after the first
200 recruits let for Mississippi
3 workers disappeared
Michael Schwerner, Andrew
Goodman, and James Chaney
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
Had been taken to jail for speeding
charges but were released
Then no one knows what happened
FBI did not get involved for a full
day
They were found dead on August 4
Mississippi and Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer helped get
blacks registered to vote and
started their foothold in getting
elected
3 Civil Rights Volunteers
Pete Segeer