How Did The Bus Boycott Affect The Civil Rights Movement

Resource Paper Outline

The bus boycott was one of the foundations leading up to the civil rights movement. This historical event has changed the way people look at America as a country. The bus boycott increased the idea of freedom for many generations to come. Now more than ever, the bus boycott and events that followed are changing today’s equal rights issues. The equal rights movement affected everyone back then and today.

The Bus Boycott help create two of the most iconic leaders of the period: Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks. MLK was elected to lead the bus boycott and the Montgomery Improvement Association. MIA made a list of demands to the city of Montgomery, and all demands made were met.

Rosa Parks and many other African Americans

arrests lead to the Bus Boycott of 1955. Forty- two-year-old Rosa, who had had a hard day working as a seamstress, refused to give her seat up to a white man when asked to do so by the bus driver. Park was arrested that day and later fined for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses. Rosa’s small act of courage set off a social revolution that would change Montgomery and America forever.
The boycott created the chaos of the bus system. With most of the Montgomery bus riders being of African American descent, the Montgomery Bus system lost a great deal of money and thousands of riders due to the boycott. The bus boycott started four days following Parks arrest (December 5, 1955) and lasted until December 20, 1956.
Rosa Parks was not the only African-American treated poorly.

Many African Americans were unfairly treated and abused just for sitting in the wrong seat. Black activists had begun to build a case to challenge state bus segregation laws around the arrest of a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, a student at a High School in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. At the time, Colvin was an active member of the NAACP Youth Council, a group to which Rosa Parks served as Advisor. Colvin's legal case formed the core of Browder v. Gale, which ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott when the Supreme Court ruled on it in December

1956.
The Ku Klux Klan was created to “deal” with the protesters.

There were mass killings and bombings of African American homes and churches. Fights broke out everywhere. On January 30, 1956, opponents of the Montgomery bus boycott bombed the house of Martin Luther King; the family escaped the home without injury. A crowd of angry campaign participants gathered outside the house. Although many in the crowd were eager to retaliate violently, Martin Luther persuaded them to leave and maintain their nonviolent discipline. He said, “Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place.”

Everyone around was affected and still is, those for African American rights and those who were against them. African American’s lives changed forever. African Americans were now given rights they thought they would never have. Whites had to adjust to “new” world around them. Everything they thought they knew was gone. A new environment for everyone in

America.
Because the Boycott occurred, so many things in the world, have changed for the better. Since the event, African Americans can now vote without having an issue at all. In the past, many tests, like reading and writing were created so that African Americans could not vote. African Americans can live their lives without fear. Now, there are no longer organizations like the KKK that threaten the lives of African Americans. Segregation is no longer an issue in America.
The segregation on busses, in restaurants, in bathrooms, and in schools has stopped. Other businesses aside from restaurants have also stopped segregating public places. Blacks and Whites can attend school together. The United States now has an African American president. This is a great example of how far we as a country, have united together. African Americans also hold other high positions in America like supreme court justices and the secretary of state.
The fight for equality is still present in the United States today. Some feel that segregation is still present, but others feel that segregation is a thing of the past. In more recent events, there have riots all over the country because of the thought of better equality after the events in Ferguson, Missouri this past year. Michael Brown, a black teenager of Ferguson, was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a police officer, in Ferguson, The shooting prompted protests that roiled the area of St. Louis for weeks. On Nov. 24, the St. Louis County prosecutor announced that a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson. The announcement set off another wave of protests all over the country. In March, the Justice Department called upon Ferguson to overhaul its criminal justice system, declaring that the city had engaged in constitutional violations.
The events at Ferguson, Mo showed that not everything in the world was perfect. We are still very much divided, but, we are more divided on the fact that some still feel segregation and many do not. The events back in the 1950's with the bus boycott and the more recent events in Ferguson have shown that. Many Americans, black and white believe that there is a fight still to fight. Whether that is true of not, no one will know because of differing opinions on the subject.