DECEMBER 5-1955 THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT BEGAN

Sixty two years ago today on December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began in Montgomery, Alabama. Four days before on December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks a 42 year old African American woman had been arrested and charged when she refused to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery City bus to a white man who could not find a seat in the crowded section of the bus designated for white people. It was the law at the time in Montgomery, Alabama and many other south...ern states of the USA that African Americans sitting in the first few rows of the “Colored” section of the city buses had to give up their seats in the “Colored” section of buses if there were no seats for white passengers in the section designated for them.

When the driver demanded that Rosa Parks and the other three African Americans sitting in the first row of the “Colored” section of the bus relinquish their seats for the white man, she refused. The other three African American passengers vacated their seats and moved to stand at the back of the bus but the driver wanted the row of seats cleared of “Negroes.” Rosa Parks wrote in her autobiography that she as a 42 year old woman was not physically tired. She was tired of the unfair treatment to which African Americans were subjected. She also shared that she was thinking of 15 year old Emmett Till who had been tortured and killed just four months before in August 1955 because he was accused of whistling at a white woman.


Rosa Parks was the third African American woman arrested under the same circumstances in 1955. Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old African American secondary school student had been arrested (9 months before Rosa Parks) on March 2, 1955. When it was discovered that the 15 year old was pregnant some “respectable” members of the African American community deemed her unsuitable for their support. On October 21, 1955 (barely a month before Rosa Parks) Mary Louise Smith an 18 year old African American was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus in similar circumstances to Rosa Parks. It has been said that the “respectable” members of the African American community deemed her unsuitable for their support because her father seemed a bit tipsy when they visited the home and he was walking around barefooted in his front yard.


When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 she was the ideal candidate for the “respectable” members of the African American community to support. Rosa Parks was the secretary of the NAACP, she was married, gainfully employed and no apparent skeletons in her closets. The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on Monday December 5, 1955 and lasted until December 20, 1956. The African American community stayed off the buses in spite of the violence they suffered from the white community trying to force them to ride the segregated buses.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOd5ltjj8g