Why Is The Montgomery Bus Boycott Important

One historical event we have studied this year was the Montgomery Bus Boycott which began on December 5th 1955 and ended on December 20th 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama. African Americans had been discriminated against since slavery began in 1619, and even after slavery was abolished in 1863, black people still faced extreme racism every day. An example of this is the enforced segregation of public buses. The front section of the buses were for white passengers and the back section was for Black passengers. Although black people made up 70% of the passengers of public buses, if the bus was full and a white person wanted to get on then the black people would have to give up their seats for the whites and stand. This was Law. Black people finally

The NAACP went to the Federal Court in an attempt to have transportation segregation declared as unconstitutional. The Court ruled in favour of Black people but, Mayor of Montgomery, W A Gayle enacted their right to appeal this to the Supreme Court. Under the name Browder vs Gayle, the supreme court ruled in favour of the blacks, making the boycott a victory. This consequence was achieved because the boycott drove black leaders to initially take this case to the Federal Court.

The last consequence that came from the Montgomery bus boycott was it Martin Luther King Jr. the the fore front of the Black Civil rights movement. King was President of the Montgomery improvement association, which was dedicated to the protest. Because of this he became the voice of the boycott and later one of the leaders of the whole Civil Rights Movement and eventually a national symbol. He was able to gain such a big role in the Civil Rights Movement because of the the overwhelming success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott highlighting the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Non-Violence protest