BACKGROUND: CLAUDETTE COLVIN
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal episode in the U.S. civil rights movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign officially started on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. However, Parks was not the first person to do so. Black activists had begun to build a case to challenge state bus segregation laws around the arrest of a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery.
On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white person. At the time, Colvin was an active member in the NAACP Youth Council, a group to which Rosa Parks served as adviser. The decision to choose Parks and not Colvin as the symbol of the boycott was political. Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort because she was a teenager who was pregnant by a married man. Words like "feisty," "mouthy," and "emotional" were used to describe her, while her counterpart Parks was viewed as being calm, well-mannered, and studious. Although Colvin was not alone in her efforts and other women also protested segregation in a similar manner prior to Parks' protest, because of the social norms of the time, the NAACP leaders chose Parks to symbolize their boycott.
ROSA PARKS
Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was a seamstress by profession and also the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. Twelve years before her history-making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driver James F. Blake, who ordered her to board at the back door and then drove off without her. Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor. The protest that arose around the Taylor case was the first instance of a nationwide civil rights protest, and it laid the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott.
On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the frontmost row for black people on the bus. When a Caucasian man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Found guilty on December 5, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4, but she appealed.
Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for boycotting public transportation, Montgomery, Alabama, February, 1956.
Although Parks was not the first woman who refused to give up her seat to a white person on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, she became the symbol of the boycott.
E.D. NIXON
One of the figures that had a critical impact on the boycott was Edgar Daniel Nixon (July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987), known as E. D. Nixon, an African-American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama. Before the activists could mount the court challenge, they needed someone to voluntarily violate the bus seating law and be arrested for it. Nixon carefully searched for a suitable plaintiff. He rejected Colvin, whose protest was spontaneous, because she became an unwed mother; another woman who was arrested because he did not believe she had the fortitude to see the case through; and a third woman, Mary Louise Smith, because her father was allegedly an alcoholic. The final choice was Rosa Parks, the elected secretary of the Montgomery NAACP and Nixon had been her boss.
Between Parks' arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work schedule, he arranged that no election of a leader for the proposed boycott would take place until his return. When he returned he caucused with Ralph Abernathy and Rev. E.N. French to name the association to lead the boycott (they selected the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to the city, and select King (Nixon's choice) to lead the boycott.
BOYCOTT
On the night of Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows:
Another 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 is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped... 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 all buses Monday.
On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few African Americans rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves, driving people to various destinations. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.
King and 155 other protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus under a 1921 ordinance. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest.
VICTORY: BROWDER V. GAYLE
Pressure increased across the country as the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle - a case heard before a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The panel consisted of three judges and it ruled 2-1 on June 5, 1956 that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment protections for equal treatment. The state and city appealed and the decision was summarily affirmed by the United States Supreme Court on November 13, 1956. Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith and Jeanette Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the case.
The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, after Mayor Gayle was handed official written notice by federal marshals, after 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott resounded far beyond the desegregation of public buses. It stimulated the national civil rights movement and launched King into the national spotlight as a leader.
The bus Rosa Parks rode before being arrested
The National City Lines bus, No. 2857, on which Rosa Parks was riding before she was arrested (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132), is now a museum exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.