Montgomery Bus Boycott

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Montgomery Bus Boycott “The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is often told as a simple, happy tale of the "little people" triumphing over the seemingly insurmountable forces of evil. The truth is a little less romantic and a little more complex.” (Cozzens, 1997) The structure of southern society before 1955 ensured that black Americans were very much second class citizens. Southern states had white only restaurants; white only rest zones in bus centers, buses were segregated with designated areas reserved for white customers and other seats for black customers. The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is often told to have begun simply from Rosa Parks boarding a bus from a long day after work and refusing to give up her seat to white passengers. The story is often told with that being the day when the black people of Montgomery, Alabama, democratically decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being relegated to the back when a white boarded. What many people do not know is that day was not the day that the movement to desegregate the buses started. Of all the people who played a role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks is the most known. The simple story we are taught in elementary school leaves out many significant people such as Jo Ann Robinson, who absentmindedly sat in the front of an empty bus only to be sent off in tears from the bus driver yelling at her. After Jo’s traumatic experience on the bus in 1945 she tried to start a protest but was turned down when the other woman of the Woman’s Political Council brushed off the incident as “a fact of life in Montgomery.” (Cozzens, 1997) About nine years later, after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, Jo wrote a letter to W.A. Gayle, the mayor of Montgomery saying that "there has been talk from
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