Montgomery Bus Boycott Research Paper

Americans have been fighting for civil rights as early as the seventeenth century, and are still fighting for it today. From December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, the African-American community of Montgomery, Alabama boycotted public buses due to segregation of blacks. This events stands at the height of the Civil Rights Movement because of its victory. Much of African-American history went undocumented. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an important enough event to keep in history textbooks because culturally, it started due to segregation based on race, and politically because these protests brought new laws into action.

Culturally, the Montgomery Bus Boycott set the mood of the entire Civil Rights Movement. The public buses in Montgomery, Alabama at the time were segregated, the whites sat at the front and the blacks sat at the back. During this time, the white community saw themselves as superior to the other races. However, the African-American community have started to stand up for themselves. Although she was not the first one to do so, Rosa Parks was the one to spark the boycott. She refused to give her seat up to a white passenger which resulted in her arrest. For Parks, “it is unlikely that she fully realized the forces she had set into motion and the controversy that would soon swirl around her” says the official website of the Montgomery Bus

Boycott. That one event sparked the entire boycott. Soon all African-Americans in Montgomery would stop using public buses and began to either pay for taxis or walk where they needed to go. The boycott was very important because it gave the African-American community hope for the future. Black leaders began to show their support of this event as the news spread and “black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)” says the History website. The MIA elected Martin Luther King Jr. as its president, which brought King into the public light. The MIA’s main purpose was the fight for the rights of blacks in Montgomery and fight for the integration of all races. King became one of the most influential people in the Civil Rights Movement and did a great amount of things for African-Americans during this time. The boycott was also important because it helped the African-American community come together as one. It gave people a voice and allowed people to be involved in something.
Politically, the boycott brought revolution to the African-American community. It was “regarded as the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the U.S.” It was also entirely a peaceful protest. There was no violence that is one of the many reasons it got the support of people outside the black community as well. This method of protests influenced people for years to come. King was the main advocate for the peaceful protest. He advised people to protest peacefully for the entirety of his life. Thousands of people took part in this boycott, “King claimed that that 42,000 blacks took part”. All of these people came together to get the rights that they deserved. The MIA did not ask for the elimination of segregation in the beginning, “the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear”. At the end, they had demanded that laws be placed to desegregate buses in Montgomery. African-American made up 75 percent of Montgomery’s bus riders, and yet the city still hesitated to give them what they had been asking for. The powerful African-American leaders led this boycott to its victory. “On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” and on December 20th, 1956 they went to the Supreme Court as well who kept the lower court's’ ruling. The laws took place the next day and the blacks returned to riding the buses in Montgomery. The 381 day boycott finally ended and all the protesting paid off. This sparked a series of protests about Civil Rights. This one event eventually resulted in Civil Rights Acts being passed. It brought a hope into the lives of these African-American families around the country that a life of equality was possible to fight for.
Looking at different aspects of the Montgomery Bus Boycott made it clear that this was an event that needed to remain in history textbooks.

This event sparked other events to take place in American history. It brought a great deal of hope to the people involved and the people who witnessed it. For years later, this event continued to inspire people. For example, during the “Brown Power” Movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott inspired the farm worker boycotts that were held. It sparked many events for the Civil Rights Movement. If this boycott never happened, American history could possibly be extremely

different.