Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an extremely powerful people’s movement that began December 5, 1955, lasted 381 days, and ultimately changed African-Americans’ history forever. During this time the African Americans of Montgomery walked or made car pools to get to their destination in order to avoid the racially segregated public vehicles. The intent of this movement was to go up against racial segregation in public transportation as well as stand up for black civil rights as a whole. An African American woman triggered the boycott named Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, who refused to give up her seat in order for a white person to take it. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was composed of many important people in the history of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. I have written this essay as a source of information of the important people and events of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and also discuss its significance in history. Contrary to common belief, the boycott was not spur-of-the-moment, but actually the complete opposite, it was planned out and organized by local leaders and organizations. Some of the organizations were WPC or the Women’s Political Council and its leader Jo Ann Robinson, and NAACP or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and its leader E.D. Nixon and they had been fighting this issue for quite a while. In 1954, the WPC imposed the requirement on two different occasions that the city talk about the racial segregation on public transportation, they even wrote a letter to the Mayor saying that if they continued to not take action that there would be a boycott. Nevertheless, this city bus boycott couldn’t start until everything was set and perfect. They were finally perfect one year later after the arrest of Rosa Parks. The Rosa Parks incident was certainly not the first of this nature to ever occur. A few months before, two young African-Americans, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, were arrested