why was the montgomery bus boycott successful essay

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Why was the Montgomery Bus Boycott so successful?

On December 1, 1955, a single act of defiance by Rosa Parks against racial segregation on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus ignited a year-long boycott that would become a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by a young Martin Luther King Jr., mobilized the African American community in a collective stand against injustice, challenging the deeply entrenched laws of segregation in the South.

This historic protest signaled the power of nonviolent resistance and grassroots activism in the fight for racial equality.

Here is how it happened.

What were the causes of the boycott?

Before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the city of Montgomery, Alabama, like much of the American South, enforced strict racial segregation laws, known as Jim Crow laws, which mandated separate public facilities for white and black citizens.

Public transportation was no exception, with buses segregated by race and black passengers often subjected to humiliating treatment.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks , a seamstress and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus, as was required by law.

Her arrest for this act of civil disobedience sparked outrage within the African American community.

In response, black leaders in Montgomery, including a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. , organized a meeting at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to discuss a course of action.

They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to oversee the boycott and chose King as its president, recognizing his leadership potential and oratorical skills.

How did the Montgomery Bus Boycott work?

The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially began on December 5, 1955, the day of Rosa Parks' trial.

In preparation, flyers were distributed and announcements were made in black churches throughout the city, calling for African Americans to avoid using the buses on that day.

The response was overwhelming, with an estimated 90% of Montgomery's black residents participating in the boycott on the first day.

The boycotters' demands were simple: courteous treatment by bus drivers, first-come-first-served seating with blacks filling seats from the back and whites from the front, and the employment of black bus drivers on predominantly black routes. 

The success of the initial boycott led to a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church, where more than 5,000 black residents gathered to discuss the possibility of extending the protest.

With Martin Luther King Jr. emerging as a leading voice, the community decided to continue the boycott until their demands for fair treatment on the buses were met.

The boycott, initially planned to last for just one day, stretched on for 381 days, severely impacting the city's transit system and drawing international attention.

How did the authorities respond?

The city's response was initially dismissive, and the boycotters' resolve was met with resistance from white officials and citizens.

The city government and the bus company refused to negotiate, and legal and economic pressure was applied to try to break the boycott.

Despite these challenges, the black community's commitment to the boycott remained strong. 

They organized carpool systems, and many walked long distances to work, school, and church. 

The city's legal system targeted the boycott with injunctions and lawsuits, aiming to cripple the movement by arresting its leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., on charges related to the boycott.

Economic pressure was also applied, as many black workers, who were participating in the boycott, faced threats of job loss or actual termination. 

King's eloquence and conviction were evident in his speeches and sermons, which he used to articulate the goals of the boycott and to call for unity and perseverance.

His home and the churches where he spoke became targets for segregationist violence, with his house being bombed in January 1956. 

Why did the boycott end?

The successful conclusion of the boycott, with the Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, was a testament to the effectiveness of coordinated, nonviolent protest. 

This Supreme Court ruling not only desegregated buses in Montgomery but also set a legal precedent that would be used to challenge other forms of segregation.

The boycott also propelled Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight, establishing him as a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement. 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott had a profound impact on the Civil Rights Movement, setting a precedent for nonviolent protest and serving as a catalyst for future civil rights actions.

The successful boycott demonstrated the power of collective action and the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance, inspiring similar protests and boycotts across the South.

It also brought national and international attention to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, highlighting the injustices of segregation and racial discrimination.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is often seen as the beginning of a new phase in the Civil Rights Movement, one that focused on direct action and mass mobilization.

It laid the groundwork for future campaigns, such as the sit-ins , Freedom Rides , and the March on Washington, which further advanced the cause of civil rights and social justice in America. 

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956

Sparked by the arrest of Rosa  Parks  on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The  Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. In  Stride Toward Freedom , King’s 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights.

The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The  Women’s Political Council  (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they sought for Montgomery’s bus system: no one standing over empty seats; a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and a policy that would require buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities. When the meeting failed to produce any meaningful change, WPC president Jo Ann  Robinson  reiterated the council’s requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, telling him, “There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses” (“A Letter from the Women’s Political Council”).

A year after the WPC’s meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus. Seven months later, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery’s black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year.

King recalled in his memoir that “Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,” and because “her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted” she was “one of the most respected people in the Negro community” (King, 44). Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks’ arrest by calling for a one-day protest of the city’s buses on 5 December 1955. Robinson prepared a series of leaflets at Alabama State College and organized groups to distribute them throughout the black community. Meanwhile, after securing bail for Parks with Clifford and Virginia  Durr , E. D.  Nixon , past leader of the Montgomery chapter of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP), began to call local black leaders, including Ralph  Abernathy  and King, to organize a planning meeting. On 2 December, black ministers and leaders met at  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church  and agreed to publicize the 5 December boycott. The planned protest received unexpected publicity in the weekend newspapers and in radio and television reports.

On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city’s ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president. Parks recalled: “The advantage of having Dr. King as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies” (Parks, 136).

That evening, at a mass meeting at  Holt Street Baptist Church , the MIA voted to continue the boycott. King spoke to several thousand people at the meeting: “I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong” ( Papers  3:73 ). After unsuccessful talks with city commissioners and bus company officials, on 8 December the MIA issued a formal list of demands: courteous treatment by bus operators; first-come, first-served seating for all, with blacks seating from the rear and whites from the front; and black bus operators on predominately black routes.

The demands were not met, and Montgomery’s black residents stayed off the buses through 1956, despite efforts by city officials and white citizens to defeat the boycott. After the city began to penalize black taxi drivers for aiding the boycotters, the MIA organized a carpool. Following the advice of T. J.  Jemison , who had organized a carpool during a 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, the MIA developed an intricate carpool system of about 300 cars. Robert  Hughes  and others from the Alabama Council for Human Relations organized meetings between the MIA and city officials, but no agreements were reached.

In early 1956, the homes of King and E. D. Nixon were bombed. King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: “Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place” ( Papers  3:115 ). City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr.  Despite this resistance, the boycott continued.

Although most of the publicity about the protest was centered on the actions of black ministers, women played crucial roles in the success of the boycott. Women such as Robinson, Johnnie  Carr , and Irene  West  sustained the MIA committees and volunteer networks. Mary Fair Burks of the WPC also attributed the success of the boycott to “the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation” (Burks, “Trailblazers,” 82). In his memoir, King quotes an elderly woman who proclaimed that she had joined the boycott not for her own benefit but for the good of her children and grandchildren (King, 78).

National coverage of the boycott and King’s trial resulted in support from people outside Montgomery. In early 1956 veteran pacifists Bayard  Rustin  and Glenn E.  Smiley  visited Montgomery and offered King advice on the application of Gandhian techniques and  nonviolence  to American race relations. Rustin, Ella  Baker , and Stanley  Levison  founded  In Friendship  to raise funds in the North for southern civil rights efforts, including the bus boycott. King absorbed ideas from these proponents of nonviolent direct action and crafted his own syntheses of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. He said: “Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work” (Rowland, “2,500 Here Hail”). Other followers of Gandhian ideas such as Richard  Gregg , William Stuart  Nelson , and Homer  Jack  wrote the MIA offering support.

On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in  Browder v. Gayle  that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed  Browder v. Gayle  and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses. The court’s decision came the same day that King and the MIA were in circuit court challenging an injunction against the MIA carpools. Resolved not to end the boycott until the order to desegregate the buses actually arrived in Montgomery, the MIA operated without the carpool system for a month. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, and on 20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott; the community agreed. The next morning, he boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery” ( Papers  3:486 ). King’s role in the bus boycott garnered international attention, and the MIA’s tactics of combining mass nonviolent protest with Christian ethics became the model for challenging segregation in the South.

Joe Azbell, “Blast Rocks Residence of Bus Boycott Leader,” 31 January 1956, in  Papers  3:114–115 .

Baker to King, 24 February 1956, in  Papers  3:139 .

Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in  Women in the Civil Rights Movement , ed. Crawford et al., 1990.

“Don’t Ride the Bus,” 2 December 1955, in  Papers  3:67 .

U. J. Fields, Minutes of Montgomery Improvement Association Founding Meeting, 5 December 1955, in  Papers  3:68–70 .

Gregg to King, 2 April 1956, in  Papers  3:211–212 .

Indictment,  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr., et al. , 21 February 1956, in  Papers  3:132–133 .

Introduction, in  Papers  3:3–7 ;  17–21 ;  29 .

Jack to King, 16 March 1956, in  Papers  3:178–179 .

Judgment and Sentence of the Court,  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr. , 22 March 1956, in  Papers  3:197 .

King, Statement on Ending the Bus Boycott, 20 December 1956, in  Papers  3:485–487 .

King,  Stride Toward Freedom , 1958.

King, Testimony in  State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr. , 22 March 1956, in  Papers  3:183–196 .

King to the National City Lines, Inc., 8 December 1955, in  Papers  3:80–81 .

“A Letter from the Women’s Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama,” in  Eyes on the Prize , ed. Carson et al., 1991.

MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, 5 December 1955, in  Papers  3:71–79 .

Nelson to King, 21 March 1956, in  Papers  3:182–183 .

Parks and Haskins,  Rosa Parks , 1992.

Robinson,  Montgomery Bus Boycott , 1987.

Stanley Rowland, Jr., “2,500 Here Hail Boycott Leader,”  New York Times , 26 March 1956.

Rustin to King, 23 December 1956, in  Papers  3:491–494 .

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 20, 2024 | Original: November 9, 2009

Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott . Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , the boycott lasted more than a year—during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job—and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation .

Rosa Parks’ Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama , on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona’s parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Did you know? When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, it wasn’t the first time she’d clashed with driver James Blake. Parks stepped onto his very crowded bus on a chilly day 12 years earlier, paid her fare at the front, then resisted the rule in place for Black people to disembark and re-enter through the back door. She stood her ground until Blake pulled her coat sleeve, enraged, to demand her cooperation. Parks left the bus rather than give in.

Rosa’s mother was a teacher, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age 11 and eventually attended high school there, a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers’ College for Negroes. She left at 16, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked as a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.

Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery’s large African American community. Co-existing with white people in a city governed by “ Jim Crow ” (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified water fountains and could borrow books only from the “Black” library, among other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her out of fear for her safety, in December 1943, Rosa also joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary . She worked closely with chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a railroad porter known in the city as an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, and also as president of the local branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union .

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. Black residents of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found the Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on a typical day were Black, and on this day Rosa Parks was one of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats behind them for Black citizens. However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a Black person to give up a seat for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on the books: One said segregation must be enforced, but another, largely ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be asked to give up a seat even if there were no other seat on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at one point on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated “white” section were taken. So the driver told the riders in the four seats of the first row of the “colored” section to stand, in effect adding another row to the “white” section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired,” wrote Parks in her autobiography, “but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Eventually, two police officers approached the stopped bus, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Although Parks used her one phone call to contact her husband, word of her arrest had spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous Black person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. Sitting in Parks’ home, Nixon convinced Parks—and her husband and mother—that Parks was that plaintiff. Another idea arose as well: The Black population of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks’ trial, Monday, December 5. By midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, given a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Meanwhile, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists in the community had anticipated. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.–new to Montgomery and just 26 years old—as the MIA’s president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court , the Montgomery Bus Boycott engendered anger in much of Montgomery’s white population as well as some violence, and Nixon’s and Dr. King’s homes were bombed . The violence didn’t deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama in Montgomery continued to gain attention from the national and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court’s written order arrived in Montgomery. Parks—who had lost her job and experienced harassment all year—became known as “the mother of the civil rights movement.”

Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit’s youth.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story . In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington , Thomas Edison , Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol.

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