Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on the 4th of February, 1913. Her parents were James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, who was a teacher.

At the age of 2, Rosa's family moved to Pine Level, Alabama, where she grew up on her grandparents' farm.

Rosa had a happy childhood and was very close to her extended family. As a young girl, Rosa attended small rural schools.

Then, at the age of 11, she attended a private school, Montgomery Industrial School for Girls.

Rosa excelled in her studies, but she had to leave in her final year to care for her ailing grandmother and mother.

In 1932, at the age of eighteen, Rosa Parks married Raymond Parks, a barber who was also active in the civil rights movement.

The couple moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where they became involved in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter.

Thanks to her husband's encouragement, Rosa Parks began attending political meetings and taking part in civil rights demonstrations. 

Rosa became a secretary for the NAACP and helped organise protests against segregation and racism.

However, her role as secretary was only voluntary, and she needed to work fulltime as well.

As a result, Rosa Parks held various jobs over the years, including working as a housekeeper and a seamstress at a Montgomery department store.

In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance that required all buses to be segregated.

Black people were made to sit at the back of the bus, while white people sat at the front.

If there were no seats available in the front, black people had to give up their seats for white people.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day at work, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded a city bus to go home.

She had bought a ticket and was sitting in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the 'colored' section.

When the bus became full, the driver, James Frederick Blake, told Mrs Parks and three other black passengers to give up their seats for white passengers.

However, Rosa Parks refused. The verbal exchange between Blake and Parks has become famous. 

The bus driver had threatened her by saying, “If you don’t stand up, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested".

Rosa Parks is said to have replied quite calmly, “You may do that.”

When it was clear that Parks was not going to follow his directions, Blake called the police.

Two officers came and asked Mrs Parks to leave the bus, but she still refused. The officers forcibly removed Mrs Parks from the bus and took her to jail for violating Montgomery's segregation laws.

She was fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.

News of Mrs Parks' arrest spread quickly, and it sparked outrage among the black community in Montgomery.

Her arrest led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), an organization dedicated to boycotting the city's buses.

The MIA was led by a 26-year-old Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The boycott was initially proposed by two members of Montgomery’s black community: a friend of Rosa Park's called Edgar Daniel Nixon, who raised the bail to get her out of jail, and Jo Ann Robinson, who was a college teacher.

Nixon and Robinson arranged a one-­day boycott of the buses as a public protest of Parks’ mistreatment.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), an organization of Black professional women which was led by Jo Ann Robinson, helped distribute 35,000 leaflets calling for the boycott

So, on the 5th of December, the boycott of Montgomery's buses began, but it continued for longer than the proposed one day.

In fact, it would last for 381 days, during which time the protestors walked, carpooled, or took taxis to get around the city.

It is estimated that 90% of the city's black population took part in the decision to not ride the buses.

The protesters were determined to maintain the boycott until the Montgomery laws were changed. Yet, the city officials were reluctant to give in.

When King and the MIA met with white officials, they asked for two main changes: a removal of the requirement for black passengers to stand for white passengers, and for black bus drivers to be used on bus routes through black neighbourhoods.

The city officials rejected these requests. Therefore, the bus boycott continued.

However, the ongoing boycott had a significant impact on the city of Montgomery.

Not only was the bus service losing significant amounts of money due to an estimated 30,000 unsold tickets every day, the local businesses complained of fewer customers in their shops, which also led to less profits.

In fact, Montgomery City Lines, Inc., the company operating the buses, reported losing approximately 65% of its revenue during the boycott as a result of the massive decline in ridership.

The longer the protest went on, the more the city suffered.

The issue was then sent to the US Supreme Court for a resolution. Unfortunately, the full legal protest would take a year before a verdict was reached.

During this time, King and other members of the MIA were attacked for their involvement in the protest in the hopes of intimidating them into withdrawing the legal challenge.

King was arrested for speeding and spent a short time in jail, and his home was firebombed.

Then, on February 1, 1956, a case was brought by four African American women—Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith—who had been mistreated under the city's segregation laws.

This lawsuit, known as Browder v. Gayle, argued that the segregation laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

On June 5, 1956, a three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ruled that the bus segregation laws were indeed unconstitutional and had to be removed.

In protest of this decision, the white officials submitted a challenge to the ruling, which meant that the legal process had to go longer before a decision could be enforced.

Finally, on November 13th, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional, and that the Montgomery city council had to formally end racial segregation of their buses by the 20th of December.

They had no choice but to comply with these orders. The very next day, King led black passengers back onto the buses for their first desegregated ride.

The bus boycott was over, and it had been a huge victory for the civil rights movement.

The boycott of the Montgomery city buses would be one of the longest single civil rights events in American history. 

Its focus on public, non­violent action would set the tone for the rest of the civil rights movement for the next decade. Rosa Parks had helped change history.

The success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott resonated far beyond Alabama, inspiring a wave of similar protests across the South and leading to the creation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate future civil rights actions.

After the bus boycott, Rosa Parks continued to fight for equality and justice. 

She also worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders to promote nonviolent resistance against segregation and discrimination.

Throughout her life, Rosa Parks remained an inspiration to all those who believe in equal rights for all people. 

She received many honors and awards during her lifetime and posthumously, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs Parks moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she lived until her death on October 24, 2005.

She was 92 years old.