On this day in 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a city-wide boycott of the white supremacist bus system in Montgomery, Alabama, began, just four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.
The leader of the local NAACP chapter, E.D. Nixon, used Parks' arrest to launch a bus boycott to try and change the city's bus policies. Ula Taylor, a professor in the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, has noted that organizing efforts by the Women’s Political Council, hundreds of professional class black women led by Jo Ann Robinson, would play an essential role in the boycott's success.
The boycott had widespread support in the black community, and black taxi drivers lowered their fares to match the cost of taking a bus in solidarity. In response, membership of the white supremacist "White Citizen's Council" increased dramatically.
Many acts of terrorism were committed by whites in response to the boycott - the homes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy were firebombed, boycotters were often physically attacked, and dozens of activists were arrested.
The boycott ended more than a year later, on December 20th, 1956, when the city passed an ordinance allowing black members to sit where they wanted. The campaign of white terrorism continued, however, and, within the month that followed the city ordinance, multiple churches were bombed, busses were subject to sniper fire, and at least one black man was lynched.
Learn more:
- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/montgomery-bus-boycott-1955-56/
- https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/11/podcast-montgomery-bus-boycott-womens-political-council/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott