Montgomery Bus Boycott Essay Research Paper During

Montgomery Bus Boycott Essay, Research Paper

During the first half of the twentieth century segregation was the way of life in the south. It was an excepted, and even though it was morally wrong, it still went on as if there was nothing wrong at all. African-Americans were treated as if they were a somehow sub-human, they were treated because of the color of their skin that somehow, someway they were different.

In the south it was almost impossible to find any aspect of life that was not segregated. The schools were segregated and the restaurants were segregated. There was .Colored Only. bathrooms, and .Colored Only. drinking fountains and segregation was definitely present in public transportation.

Martin Luther King Jr. could not have said it better when he addressed the massive crowd at the first meeting of Montgomery Improvement Association and said, . . . . we are here, we are here because we are tired now..1 On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, a seamstress who lived in Montgomery, Al, refused to give her seat up to a white man who had nowhere to sit on the bus. Because she would not move to the back of the bus, she was arrested for violating the Alabama bus segregation laws. Rosa was thrown in jail and fined fourteen dollars.

Enraged by Mrs. Parks arrest the black community of Montgomery united together and organized a boycott of the bus system until the city buses were integrated. The black men and women stayed of the buses until December 20, 1956, almost thirteen months after the boycott their goal was reached. The Montgomery Bus Boycott can be considered a major turning point in the Civil Rights Movement because it made Martin Luther King Jr. public leader in the movement, starting point for non-violent protest as an effective tool in the fight for civil rights, showed that African-Americans united for a cause could stand up to segregation, and was big step towards integration and civil rights for African-Americans in America..

Being president of the Montgomery Improvement Association taught Martin Luther the skills and gave the exposure to become a great leader of a movement as large as the civil rights movement. The thing that Martin Luther King is remembered most for was his oratory skills. M.L.K was a master speaker and his speeches and the greatness of them will always live on forever. His Speaking style has been compared to such great people as Gandhi, Jesus and Fredrick Douglass because he knew how to dramatize the truth.2 This is evident when he gives his first speech as the president of the M.I.A. at the Holt Street Baptist church, he speech touched such a nerve in the massive crowd that response, a response to a sentence in King.s speech, . . . . there comes a time when people get tired being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.. The applause was so loud it has been described as a . . . .. startling noise that rolled on and on, like a wave that refused to break., . . ..3

During the beginning of the boycott very few people saw any possibility for the boycott to have much historical significance. Of the people whod did were considered of the rarest and oddest sort.4 The boycott needed something to really publicize it, something that would make it a point of interest. It needed something that open peoples eyes to what was happening in Montgomery. If something did happen it could have a positive effect on the outcome of the Bus Boycott.

On February 21, 1956 M.L.K and 88 other priests and leaders of the boycott were indicted under an old state law prohibiting boycotts. The arrests of these men caused a story of national interest, pointing all eyes of the country on the boycott going on in Montgomery. Since, M.L.K was the president the M.I.A, much of the attention given to the boycott was focused on M.L.K himself. Soon Martin was getting invitations from all over the country inviting him to speak about his beliefs on non-violence and civil rights.

Martin Luther King.s oratory skills made more and more popular and started becoming more and more of a leader in the movement.

When the Boycott ended victoriously with the Supreme Court ruling the bus segregation was unconstitutional was a very important thing for Martin Luther King. Not only had he led a massive non-violent boycott of all the blacks in Montgomery, he was succesful at winning what they had been fighting for. Again Martin Luther King.s name was linked to the bus boycott in national headlines. Only this time the papers were saying much greater things about him. He was not only the leader of a boycott, he was the leader of a successful boycott that caused the integration of buses in Montgomery. This good press made a very public and successful leader in the eye of the American Public.

On January 10 and 11, 1957 a group of 11 ministers met at Martin Luther Kings

Church in Atlanta, Ga. The topic of this meeting was what was going to happen next

since the boycott was over. At the meeting the group decided to form an organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC was going to be an organization the worked for the civil rights of African-Americans, by using the same tactics of non-violence that were used in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected as the president of this new organization. The SCLC went on to be one of the strongest organizations in the Civi