Montgomery Bus Boycotts: Role of Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Montgomery Bus Boycotts: Role of Women in the Civil Rights Movement

During the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, women played an undeniably significant role in forging the path against discrimination and oppression. Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson were individual women whose efforts deserve recognition for instigating and coordinating the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955 that would lay precedent for years to come that all people deserved equal treatment despite the color of their skin. The WPC, NAACP, and the Montgomery Churches provided the channels to organize the black public into a group that could not be ignored as well supported the black community throughout the difficult time of the boycott.

The 20th century brought a tidal wave of tolerance and equal rights for a diverse variety of people in the United States. When the century opened, women did not have an equal position with their male counter parts either in the public or private sectors of society. Women first received their right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, and the beginnings of an equal footing in the workplace during the obligatory utilization of American women as factory employees during the Second World War. Similarly, African Americans spent the 1950's and 60's fighting for their own basic civil rights that had been denied them, such as going to the school or restaurant of their choice. Or something as simple and unpretentious as where they were allowed to sit on a bus. However, by the end of the 20th Century, women, blacks, and other minorities could be found in the highest echelons of American Society. From the corporate offices of IBM, to the U.S. Supreme Court bench, an obvious ideological revolution bringing ...

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... the Montgomery Bus Boycott(Marcus 266).

Blacks walked miles to work, organized carpools, and despite efforts from the police to discourage this new spark of independence, the boycotts continued for more than a year until in November 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery bus company must desegregate it's busses. Were it not for the leadership of Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson, and the support the black community through church congregations, these events may have not happened for many years to come.

Course Material Used For this Paper

Marcus, Robert. America Firsthand. Bedford Books, Boston MA 1997.

Johnson, Micheal P. Reading the American Past. Bedford Books, Boston MA 1998

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