![]() Some took station-wagon "rolling taxis" donated by local churches. Boycott supporters walked to work-as many as eight miles a day-or they used a sophisticated system of carpools with volunteer drivers and dispatchers. Supreme Court and continued to practice segregation on city busing.įor nearly a year, buses were virtually empty in Montgomery. Ferguson has been impliedly, though not explicitly, overruled,…there is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be validly applied to public carrier transportation.” ![]() Board of Education as a legal precedent for desegregation and concluded, “In fact, we think that Plessy v. District Court ruled 2-1 that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. Gray argued their 14th Amendment right to equal protection of the law was violated, the same argument made in the Brown v. All four of the women had been previously mistreated on the city buses because of their race. Gray gathered Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith to challenge the constitutionality of the city busing laws. Therefore, it opened the door to challenge segregation in other areas as well, such as city busing. Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public schools. Ferguson decision ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as it was equal. Roots in Brown v Boardįred Gray, member and lawyer of the MIA, organized a legal challenge to the city ordinances requiring segregation on Montgomery buses. To help fund the car pool, the MIA held mass gatherings at various African American churches where donations were collected and members heard news about the success of the boycott. Over 200 people volunteered their car for a car pool and roughly 100 pickup stations operated within the city. The MIA established a carpool for African Americans. Under his leadership, the boycott continued with astonishing success. Over 70% of the cities bus patrons were African American and the one-day boycott was 90% effective. The MIA elected as their president a new but charismatic preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. Nixon, a local labor leader, organized a December 4 meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where local black leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)to spearhead a boycott and negotiate with the bus company. By December 2, schoolteacher Jo Ann Robinson had mimeographed and delivered 50,000 protest leaflets around town. ![]() Montgomery's black citizens reacted decisively to the incident. Parks refused to surrender her seat and was arrested for violating the bus driver’s orders. The driver demanded that Parks give up her seat on the bus so a white passenger could sit down. After a few stops on Parks’ ride home, the white seating section of the bus became full. There was very little African Americans could do to stop the practice because bus drivers in Montgomery had the legal ability to arrest passengers for refusing to obey their orders. After shopping, Parks entered the less crowded Cleveland Avenue bus and was able to find an open seat in the 'colored' section of the bus for her ride home.ĭespite having segregated seating arrangements on public buses, it was routine in Montgomery for bus drivers to force African Americans out of their seats for a white passenger. Knowing that she would not be able to sit, Parks went to a local drugstore to buy an electric heating pad. Nine months later, Rosa Parks - a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP member- wanted a guaranteed seat on the bus for her ride home after working as a seamstress in a Montgomery department store. On March 2, 1955, a black teenager named Claudette Colvin dared to defy bus segregation laws and was forcibly removed from another Montgomery bus. When the driver ordered him off the bus, Johns urged other passengers to join him. Years before the boycott, Dexter Avenue minister Vernon Johns sat down in the "whites-only" section of a city bus.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |