Montgomery Bus Boycotts In The Long Walk Home

Honors reflection 1
The event I attended was a movie night hosted by Dr. Anthony Adah. We watched the movie “The long walk home” directed by Richard Pearce. The film is a historical drama based on the Montgomery bus boycotts that happened in 1955-1956. The events are recounted through an Mary Elizabeth’s eyes as she looks back on her childhood. The film’s main characters are Odessa and Miriam. Miriam is a white woman and Odessa is a black woman who works for Miriam as a housekeeper. When the bus boycotts started, Odessa had to walk to work both ways. Miriam notices this and offers to give her rides two days a week.
While this is happening, a carpool system has been arranged where people are giving African-Americans rides to work. Miriam decides

to help with the boycott by giving people rides. Her husband finds out and is furious. He wants to keep his reputation as a “good white man” and follow in his brother’s footsteps. A riot breaks out at the scene and the movie ends with Miriam and he daughter Mary Elizabeth standing with the black protesters. I learned some things from this movie. I didn’t know there were carpools set up during the boycotts or how hard it was for some people to get to walk to work. Having this knowledge makes me realize how complex the civil rights movement was.
After the movie, we had a short discussion. First, we talked about the narration through the child’s eyes. We talked about how it was important to be shown in that perspective because she was growing up in an era of change and her generation was going to be different from the last. After that, we looked at the effects of group think. Group think is when everyone goes along with whatever the other group members are doing. This can be a dangerous mentality because it’s how racism keeps going through generations. This was shown by Miriam talking to Odessa about her husband. She said her husband thought the way he did because of how he was raised. This tells us that we have to look at issues through our own eyes and make our own decisions.