Montgomery Bus Boycott: Factfile Intro The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a refusal of many black Americans to use the Montgomery State bus service because it was segregating the seats. Many political figures led the boycott including Martin Luther King. Eventually, a year after a year of dispute and violence the Supreme Court ruled that the bus service could not use segregation laws. This was the first pivotal event that enabled coloured Americans to pursue freedom and justice through the Civil Rights Movement. Key Features The official start of the boycott was on December 1st 1955.
Her case draws much attention and goes to the Supreme Court. Martin Luther King, Jr. thought Parks’ defiance was brave, and in her honor, he launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott continued for over a year when the Supreme Court interrupted and acknowledged segregation on buses unlawful. The criminal case against Rosa Parks is dropped. Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed for leading the anti-segregation protest In Birmingham.
One such protest was the Montgomery Bus Boycott that occurred from 1955-56. This protest challenged the policy of bus segregation in the south. On the day of Rosa Parks trial almost the whole black community did not ride the busses. More than 66% of the riders on the busses were blacks, therefore, economically the protest hurt the bus company as the majority of the income came from black riders. Southern blacks simply stopped using the bus system to show that they weren't going to be treated unfairly, by the community, government and bus system.
Plessy v Ferguson was the landmark case decision on May 18, 1896 in which it was upheld by Supreme Court ruling to reinforce the Louisiana law that enforced the segregation of railroad facilities. It was determined that segregation was not considered a form of discrimination so long as the races were ‘equally’ accommodated. This became also known as the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine because it was well known that the conditions were certainly not equal. The overall outcome of this case set the equal rights movement back 100 years until Brown v Board of Education of Topeka overthrew this doctrine in 1954. This ruling was forever change the future of the school system for native born Black Americans and immigrants alike.
They protested, marched, wrote letters to Congress, wrote letters to the President, etc. On May 17, 1954, The US Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This decision declared that separate but equal educational facilities were unconstitutional. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2015) A form of legislation to alleviate race within prejudicial boundaries was the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this law prohibits racial discrimination in voting. This year commemorates 50 years since the infamous march in Selma, Alabama.
In the spring of 1946, Irene Morgan, a black woman, boarded a bus in Virginia to go to Baltimore, Maryland. She was ordered to sit in the back of the bus, as Virginia state law required. She objected, saying that since the bus was an interstate bus, the Virginia law did not apply. Morgan was arrested and fined ten dollars. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP took on the case.
In response to this Pastor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the Montgomery bus boycott. Ninety percent of African Americans who rode buses to work began to boycott by walking, riding bikes, or carpooling. It didn’t take long for the boycott to start making a change and on December 20, 1956, the boycott came to an end once the Supreme Court ordered that the Alabama bus segregation laws were unconstitutional (Bowles,
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.
President John F. Kennedy helped this change by making the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During President John F. Kennedy’s time in office, he promised to end racial discrimination. He put a lot of Blacks in federal positions, no other president had done that in the past. He gave hope to Black Americans that more important jobs will come to Blacks.
It’s sole purpose was to try to abolish segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation and securing for African Americans their constitutional rights. Jim Crow laws were made state and local laws in the United States between 1876 and 1965. They mandated in all public facilities in Southern states of