Preview

Essay Civil Right Movement

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2318 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Essay Civil Right Movement
Erasmus student

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ESSAY:
Montgomery bus boycott

Loughborough University May, 2011

In 1865, slavery was abolished throughout the United States, with the vote of the Thirteenth Amendment ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly recognized convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction") and the fourteenth (this ensures the right of suffrage to all citizens of the United States of America), and fifteenth amendments ("The right voting U.S. citizens will be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude") were voted in 1868 and 1870, which guaranteed the civil rights of African-American population, and equality before the law with whites.
However, these constitutional amendments were not heeded. White citizens who were in a perspective where blacks were inferior beings, continued with what is called segregation. We will study one of the major movements that allowed Black Americans to improve their civil rights and the bus boycott in Montgomery that is a social and political campaign initiated in 1955 in Alabama to oppose the policy of racial segregation in municipal public transport. Leading to the arrest of Rosa Parks, who is a black American woman; she refused to give up her seat to a white person in a bus. This boycott lasted from December 5, 1955 to December 21, 1956.
How was the movement? Who are involved? What is the result? That is what we will develop here.
But first, back to what happened before the boycott, the segregation of black American people.

Segregation has occurred after the end of slavery, black people were free, but with regard to being "equal ", they were far away. The doctrine of "Separate but equal" allowed to keep them at disadvantage. Racial segregation existed both in public places as voters: in the field of education



Bibliography: Romano, Renee Christine, The Civil Rights movement in American memory, 2006 Parks, Rosa, Rosa Parks: my story/Rosa Parks, 1999 Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson, The Montgomery bus boycott and the women who started it: the memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, 1987

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Computer Number: 19 Period 3 Montgomery Bus Boycott On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to give up her seat to a white man. It was unlikely that she realized the force she had set into motion and the controversy that would soon swirl around her. “I didn’t get on the bus with the intention of being arrested,” she said. Earlier that year in March 2, 1955, a 15-year old girl Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before the unintentional bus boycott occurred, Tallahassee was one of those towns that were considered to have good race relations amongst its citizens. Blacks knew their place and quietly accepted it, until May 26, 1956, a day that began the slow progress toward change for many blacks in Tallahassee. Two Florida A&M students, crossed the line when they decided to sit next to a white woman on a crowded, city bus instead of standing at the back like most blacks did when the only seat available was next to a white person. Little did they know, they were about to ignite the flame that started the fight for civil rights in the capitol city. Unlike the Montgomery bus boycott, these students weren’t pushed by any organization to start a boycott. They had no idea that their decision to sit, rather than stand would have such profound effects on the state as a whole. Rabby tells of this incident in great detail as it shocked both whites and blacks throughout the city. Many people…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article "The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Fall of the Montgomery City Lines," written by Felicia McGhee, McGhee writes the life of the racial segregation of the bus system and the effect of the boycott. On December 1, 1955, forty-two years old Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man after a long day of work. When the bus driver asked her and three other blacks to move to the back, Parks refused giving an explanation to why she said, "My feet were not tired but I was tired-tired of unfair treatment." (McGhee 254). Her actions violated the bus segregation laws and she was subsequently arrested for disorderly conduct. In the year before Rosa Park's arrest, two teenagers, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were also arrested for similar actions (McGhee 253). Blacks were outraged by the arrest of yet another black women on a city bus. Provoked by Park's arrest, the Montgomery's black residents initiated a 381-day boycott of the bus system. The boycott was disastrous for the Montgomery City Lines, costing the company $750,000. The residents were "boycotting a system of oppression, segregation, prescribed by the State of Alabama and the Montgomery City Council" (McGhee 252). The boycott ended on December 20, 1956 only ended after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city’s segregated bus system was unconstitutional (McGhee 252). This ties to Camus standards of the moment of rebellion is when the rebel "finds his voice" and feels that enough is enough, the rebel will stand up for himself/herself (14). The Montgomery black residents were tired of the unfair treatment of the bus segregation laws that they decided to stand up for themselves, they organized a boycott and in the end, they were able to succeed and end the bus segregation laws. But the Montgomery Bus Boycott also meets Clark et al…

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful because of the buses’ dependence on the African American community, the protest’s copious amount of supporters, and the demonstrators’ nonviolent practices. Despite the fact that many of them were segregated, the buses in the South heavily relied on the African Americans for their source of income. A majority of the people who boarded the buses and paid the fares were blacks. Specifically, according to the president of the Women’s Political Council, Jo Ann Robinson, African Americans made up three-fourths of the riders (Document B). Therefore, removing this large portion of the revenue would greatly hinder the public transport. The Montgomery Bus Boycott did exactly that. The protest called for people to refuse riding in segregated buses to express the dependence that the bus companies had on…

    • 326 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Montgomery bus boycott was one of the countless things that Martin Luther King Jr. has accomplished for the world. It was a protest against racial segregation on the public transportation vehicles in Montgomery, Alabama. The protest began, on Dec. 1, 1955. Rosa parks was chosen to be a sort of mascot for the camapaing after being was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. The next day Martin Luther King Jr. organized the botcott.…

    • 120 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    the people acted but by there race. Then two cases came along that would change that forever, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board Of Education. These cases both set very important precedents that have both changed laws of segregation. But one of the precedents where for segregation, it was the precedent Separate but Equal.…

    • 67 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    A woman named Rosa Parks got arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man. I thought things were going too far! Therefore, I organised a boycott. Nearly all Black Americans didn’t ride the bus for one year. We were victorious in 1956 when the supreme court decision restricted all segregated buses.…

    • 154 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Rosa Parks Research Paper

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The black people of Montgomery decided that the best way to show their anger at what had happened and how they were being treated would be by boycott, not use, the local bus…

    • 965 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was started by a woman who stood up against unjust segregation by sitting down. It officially started on December 5,1955, because an African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. It was started by the Montgomery Improvement Association, who created themselves for this purpose only. It continued for 381 days, a little over a year, until bus segregation was declared unconstitutional. The Montgomery Bus Boycott started a wave of nonviolent protest against the segregation between whites and blacks.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Approximately 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln many African Americans were still being treated unequally through segregation, and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired crimes. Segregation was a very common practice that was legal due to the separate but equal doctrine. This doctrine allowed local governments to segregate colored people from the whites. This segregation was seen in many aspects of an urban city such as drinking fountains, restrooms, restaurants, schools, and city busses. In December of 1955, the process of equality for colored people would begin with Rosa Parks not giving up her seat for a white man. This event would go on to ignite the Montgomery bus boycott.…

    • 1790 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    It was during 1955 when Rosa Park refused to move to her seat and give it to a white passenger, during those times it is required by the law to automatically reserve the seat for the white, because of her resistance she was sentenced to jail. The NAACP took advantage of the opportunity to challenge the law; they advocated the one-day boycott to save the rights of the minority against the segregation of the black in transportation in public places. This lead to the encouragement and participation of more residents in Southern City and a huge percentage joined the protest by not riding the Montgomery buses, because of their success more boycott was initiated to underpin the segregation law. When the black continue to resist traveling using the Montgomery buses some of them were arrested, but the Montgomery Boycott lasted for more than a year and ended up with the court ruling that this segregation system of the black in public transportation was indeed unconstitutional, once again it is another victory for the Civil Rights Movement (Blum,…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The 13th amendment banned slavery and made It unconstitutional (“13th Amendment to the Constitution,” loc.gov). This 13th amendment finally gave blacks hope for a better future that didn’t involve being degraded as human beings through strenuous work for their owners. Originally, slavery was preserved in the U.S. constitutional through the Three-Fifths Compromise. The Three-Fifths Compromise was a piece of the many compromises that took place at the constitutional convention of 1787. “The Three-Fifths Compromise outline the process for states to count slaves as part of the population in order to determine representation and taxation for the federal government” ( Michael Knoedl,“The Three-Fifths Compromise,” study.com). In essence, “enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state (“The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constituion (1787),…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ever since the beginning of the slave trade, African Americans were viewed as inferior individuals by the American people. Segregation only brought a deeper barrier between the races. “White” people thought that people of color were not opt to be in a position as high as them. African americans were targeted and they suffered with poor treatment until their equality became true. They were the main targets because they were afraid of the old customs making a return. Slavery had made to African American people very defenseless and liable. Segregation affected our history greatly and was a giant step into every citizens equality.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1950 the United States were still segregated, an unequal society, and half of the African American families lived in poverty. Whites still believed they were content with their social and economic conditions. Little did they know there was a movement in the making, a strategic plan of a nonviolent assaults on segregation. The Montgomery bus boycott was phase one of the civil rights movement. Being familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white male. Thus African Americans refused to ride the bus for 381 days until Supreme court ruled segregation of transportation to be unconstitutional. This boycott launched the nonviolent crusade to end segregation, the Civil Rights Movement.…

    • 939 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The desire of blacks for less segregation began to become more of a reality in the year 1954, in the case Brown v. Board of Education. This was a landmark decision by the U.S Supreme Court that declared it was unconstitutional to separate blacks and whites in public schools and denying equal educational rights to black children. This event is significant due to the fact that it mainly affected children and since they are the most influential, it allowed for white and black children to become more acquainted with one another, and be able to form their own opinions about one another. It also allowed for the children to be less effected by their parent’s views of the blacks and the black parent views on the white to have less of an effect on them. As the amount of unsegregated establishments began to increase more and more Civil Rights activist had peaceful boycotts to allow equal treatments of both blacks and whites. A prime example of this would be the Montgomery Bus Boycott which led to bus becoming unsegregated. This is partially due to the actions of Rosa Parks when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus. This act inspired Dr. Martin Luther King into holding a citywide bus boycott until all buses were made equal for all…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays