King’s first leadership role in the civil rights movement was as an executive in the National Association for the Advancement of colored people where he lead and organized the year long Montgomery Bus Boycott. Later the Boycott would lead to the U.S Supreme Court to rule that segregated buses were unconstitutional. He also became President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The group was different because they only used nonviolent strategies to get their point across and expose the evils of oppression. Martin Luther King spoke over 2,500 times and led marches and nonviolent demonstrations for black people to vote, desegregation, labor and other basic civil rights for all.
Rosa Parks, a former NAACP secretary, was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. This was the start of the Bus Boycotts. These were a string of non-violent protests throughout Montgomery, Alabama. African Americans made up approximately 70% of the city’s bus passengers and almost all of them stopped using the buses. A young pastor – Martin Luther King Jr, organized the campaign.
During this time Rosa Parks was arrested for failure to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus. In 1955, the incident regarding the bus lite a fire under the Civil Rights Movement. Kings experience, passion for the cause and position in the community gave him the credentials to become a leader of the 381 day boycott of the city buses. On December 20, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated buses to be unconstitutional this was a major victory for the Civil Rights cause and also proved that Kings non-violent methods of protest could yield
The Ku Klux Klan lynched Malcolm’s uncle and killed his father before he was six years old. Soon after these family member deaths, Malcolm’s mother had a nervous breakdown and was sent to a mental
On the 5th December 1955 Martin Luther King officially started his campaign for equal rights in America. He was a charismatic figure head and had great success with marches in Washington & Selma, however also had some failures in Chicago & Albany. King was made president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association after an incident concerning a woman called Rosa Parks an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. King organised a bus boycott in Montgomery, black citizens would no longer travel with the buses but instead use other means of transport, the boycott lasted eight months until a case Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Another major accomplishment of Martin Luther was the institution of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an American civil rights organisation in 1957.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an event that signaled the beginning of the non-violent civil disobedience movement led by a new leader – Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. The causes of the boycott were rooted in Jim Crow laws that operated in the Southern states. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People had gained prominence and national success in the Brown versus Board of Education case in the previous year. But the final spark was Rosa Parks’s refusal to give her seat up to some whites and her subsequent arrest in 1955 that led to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association led by Martin Luther King Jr to sustain the boycott. The Black community, the bus company, the Montgomery Council, the actions of the NAACP in the Supreme Court and the Civil Rights Movement itself were all significantly affected by this event.
In an attempt to desegregate buses throughout the south, a challenge against segregation was needed. King, along with the NAACP challenged this in Montgomery, until segregation was abolished. The boycott lasted just over a year with the black population, walking and car pooling, where they would usually use buses. The bus company lost 65% of their revenue and after King was arrested, on December 21, 1956, the Montgomery Bus Company desegregated all their buses. The boycott led to wide media attention which signified King’s leadership qualities.
Martin Luther King is a African American civil rights activist that uses numerous techniques of peaceful protest to imrove the human rights of African americans. In 1954, he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rosa Parks was famously arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. After Parks' arrest, King came to national prominence in the US. He was a leading figure in organising the boycott by African Americans of buses in Montgomery. Tutelage from Bayard Rustin, a prominent civil rights campaigner, helped King to commit to a principle of non-violent action heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's success in opposing the British in India.
The freedom rides were when civil rights activists rode interstate buses into the southern US in 1961 to test the supreme courts decision of ruling segregation on interstate transport illegal. As soon as the riders hit Montgomery, they were mobbed and attacked by white southerners. Each of these actions showed the world that peaceful means were being used to try and gain true equality as well as including whites this meant the movement widened. The Albany campaign in November 1961 was recognised as a major defeat. Under William Anderson, a number of local black organisations were formed in an attempt to desegregate the city.
How important was the Montgomery bus boycott in changing the civil rights of African-Americans? The Montgomery bus boycott was an event that started in the, 1st, December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a segregated bus to a white man, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott to occur. I think this event was the most important in changing the civil rights of African-Americans. However, other event like ‘little rock’ and the ‘sit-ins’ were also very important events in changing civil rights. I believe the Montgomery bus boycott was the most important event in the 1950s -1960s in changing the civil rights for African-Americans, because this event gained internationally attention.