It is still recognized as one of the most defining moments in the history of Black people in the United States. In protests carried in Alabama against racial discrimination, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was executed by African Americans who refused to board buses because of the segregated seating rule. This was in December of the year 1955 (McGhee, 2015). The demonstrations, led by the then youthful Martin Luther King Junior, was one of the pioneering activities that gave birth to the Civil Rights Movements all over the country resulting to the intervention of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of blacks by declaring the racial segregations as unconstitutional.
For starters, the people of African American descent had grown accustomed to being …show more content…
On the evening of December 1, 1955 after a hard day’s work as a seamstress at a Montgomery department store, Parks took a bus from Cleveland Avenue heading home. She sat down in the first row of seats assigned for colored passengers. In Montgomery’s city code, it was required that all transportation be segregated into white and colored by assigning designated seats by the drivers. This was accomplished with a line in the middle of the bus that separated African-Americans in the back and white passengers to the front.
The driver noticed several white passengers standing in the aisle and asked four black passengers to give up their seat. Three black passengers gave up their seats but Rosa Parks did not. It was upon her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger that she was arrested on exactly the same day that the Montgomery Bus Boycott began (Foner, 2004). Her refusal succeeded because it was the authority of city bus drivers to arrange to seat in favor of the whites. Needless to say, her arrest spurred protests especially from the black people against the segregation …show more content…
They acted and it was their actions that led to the real turn of events. Martin Luther King Junior, then a Reverend, took over the reign of the protests upon getting the message put across by Robinson and her fellow women. He became the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association that sponsored the boycott. With barely twenty black people gathered early the next morning, King put across reasons, needs, and plans that would make the boycott as effective as possible at the Mt. Zion Church within the city (Sanders, 2006). He also encouraged non- violent protest but the main aim was to make the protests hurt as painfully as possible in order for them to achieve their
For starters, the people of African American descent had grown accustomed to being …show more content…
On the evening of December 1, 1955 after a hard day’s work as a seamstress at a Montgomery department store, Parks took a bus from Cleveland Avenue heading home. She sat down in the first row of seats assigned for colored passengers. In Montgomery’s city code, it was required that all transportation be segregated into white and colored by assigning designated seats by the drivers. This was accomplished with a line in the middle of the bus that separated African-Americans in the back and white passengers to the front.
The driver noticed several white passengers standing in the aisle and asked four black passengers to give up their seat. Three black passengers gave up their seats but Rosa Parks did not. It was upon her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger that she was arrested on exactly the same day that the Montgomery Bus Boycott began (Foner, 2004). Her refusal succeeded because it was the authority of city bus drivers to arrange to seat in favor of the whites. Needless to say, her arrest spurred protests especially from the black people against the segregation …show more content…
They acted and it was their actions that led to the real turn of events. Martin Luther King Junior, then a Reverend, took over the reign of the protests upon getting the message put across by Robinson and her fellow women. He became the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association that sponsored the boycott. With barely twenty black people gathered early the next morning, King put across reasons, needs, and plans that would make the boycott as effective as possible at the Mt. Zion Church within the city (Sanders, 2006). He also encouraged non- violent protest but the main aim was to make the protests hurt as painfully as possible in order for them to achieve their