The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Despite King’s heavy involvement in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, among other things, another leader that participated in the American civil rights movement, seen to implement meaningful change is Rosa Parks. Parks can be seen as the spark that ignited such a move that has had a heavy impact on the American Civil rights movement. During the 1950’s African Americans were still required to sit in the back half of the Montgomery, Alabama city buses, while also giving up their seats to caucasian riders if seats were full. However, on December 1st of 1955 was when Parks, commuting from home, decided to sit in the front row of the “colored section”, being the only one to refuse to vacate her seat for a Caucasian passenger when asked to do so by the

Black leaders met, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing King as the president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met their demands. Their demands which included courtesy, the hiring of black drivers, a first-come-first-serve seating policy, as well as with caucasian passengers entering and filling seats from the front and African American from the back. In the further action of this, as well as in addition to the boycott five women from Montgomery, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in the U.S. District court, planning to have the busing segregation laws abolished. Despite African American representing most of the population at the time using the Montgomery bus system, the city resisted complying with their demands. Nonetheless, making sure to keep the boycott going, the leaders of this action organized other ways for African Americans to get to work, by organizing carpools, and getting African-American taxi drivers to charge the same price as the bus fare for African American riders (10 cents) (Montgomery Bus Boycott,2010) or some just simply chose to walk to their

As it’s regarded nowadays as the earliest mass protest, fighting for civil rights in the US, and due to this it can be seen that King then arose as a prominent national leader of the American civil rights movement as he communicated his dedication to nonviolent resistance(Montgomery Bus Boycott,2010) with the American peoples. This was one of the many victories that defined the American Civil rights movement, however as time passed realizing that they could implement change, they then fought for the segregation laws to be changed, as they began to see the bigger picture, realizing that they could implement so much more