Montgomery+Bus+Boycott+Notes

Notes-  Julia Veitinger- ~The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. ~//"My feets is weary, but my soul is rested."//  -- Mother Pollard ~blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted  ~ Perhaps the movement started on the day in 1943 when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks paid her bus fare and then watched the bus drive off as she tried to re-enter through the rear door, as the driver had told her to do.  ~ Perhaps the movement started on the day in the early 1950s when a black pastor named Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to have them tell him, "You ought to knowed better." ~When E.D. Nixon heard that Parks had been arrested, he called the police to find out why. He was told that it was "[n]one of your damn business." He asked Clifford Durr, a sympathetic white lawyer, to call. Durr easily found out that Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. [|[5]] Nixon went to the jail and posted bond for Parks. Then he told her, "Mrs. Parks, with your permission we can break down segregation on the bus with your case." [|[6]] She talked it over with her husband and her mother, then agreed. **This was the start of the case.** **~J**o Ann Robinson put plans for a one-day boycott into action. Blacks were urged to stay off of the buses. ~King was later elected to be leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) which was the organization how started the boycott and court case  ~ On January 21, 1956, the City Commission met with three non-MIA black ministers and proposed a "compromise," which was basically the system already in effect. The ministers accepted, and the commission leaked (false) reports to a newspaper that the boycott was over. The MIA did not even hear of the compromise until a black reporter in the North who received a wire report phoned to ask if the Montgomery blacks had really settled for so little. By that time it was Saturday night. On Sunday morning Montgomery newspapers were going to print the news that the boycott was over and the city's blacks were going to believe it. To prevent this from happening, some MIA officials went bar-hopping to spread the word that the stories were a hoax, that the boycott was still on. ~Then the whites tried to break up the boycott by using the law. On February 21, 89 blacks were indicted under an old law prohibiting boycotts. King was the first defendant to be tried. As press from around the nation looked on, King was ordered to pay $500 plus $500 in court costs or spend 386 days in the state penitentiary.  ~The boycott is claimed to " helped to launch a 10-year national struggle for freedom and justice, the Civil Rights Movement, that stimulated others to do the same at home and abroad." ~When the group voted if they wanted to continue the boycott, the vote as unanimously yes. ~//The New York Times//, April 26, 1956 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">**Plessy Nears Its End** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">...A succession of cases dealing with both transportation and education in recent years has brought the judicial doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson to its grave. Burial took place on May 17, 1954, when the decisions rejecting the constitutionality of "separate but equal" school facilities were handed down.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> ~Sparked by the arrest of [|**Rosa Parks**] on 1 December 1955 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> ~13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> ~The [|**Montgomery Improvement Association**] (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> ~The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> ~In //[|**Stride Toward Freedom**]//, King’s 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">~King said that ' ‘Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,’’ and because ‘‘her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted’’ she was ‘‘one of the most respected people in the Negro community’’. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: normal;">~

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: normal;">Bibliography~ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; line-height: normal;">// ~Cozzens, Lisa. "The Montgomery Bus Boycott." //Civil Rights Movement//. N.p., 29 Jun, 1998. Web. 5 May 2011. <http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/montbus.html>.//

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> //~// "Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956)." //King Institute Home//. Web. 05 May 2011. <http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_montgomery_bus_boycott_1955_1956/>.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">"Eyes on the Prize." //American Experiance//. Pbs, n.d. Web. 6 May 2011. <http://sitins.com/timeline.shtml>.