Free
On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to go home after a hard day’s work.
As usual, she sat in the back, which was where blacks had to sit. After a few stops, all the seats were taken. Then a white passenger got on board. The bus driver told Mrs. Parks and the others in her row to stand and let the white man sit. Rosa Parks refused. She was taken to the police station and booked, then moved to the city jail. That evening, she was released on bond.
News of Parks’s arrest spread quickly, and the city’s blacks decided to protest by staying off the buses. On the following Monday, almost all the city’s black bus riders had found other ways to get to work. The boycotters had a simple goal: they wanted to end segregation on city buses.
To keep the boycott going, Montgomery’s black leaders founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). They elected 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. president. The MIA started car pools to help people get to work. They also held meetings to encourage people to keep up the boycott.
▲ After Parks’s arrest and the start of the boycott, many whites became angry. People called King’s house with threats. Sometimes, he got 30 calls a night from people telling him to leave town. But King had more to think about than himself—namely, his new baby daughter, Yolanda.
During the boycott, police stopped black drivers for made up or minor issues. Today this is called “racial profiling”: stopping people because of their race. King was arrested for driving 30 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. About a hundred people were arrested for breaking an old, forgotten antiboycott law. ▶
◀ Mrs. King and Yolanda were at home on the evening of January 30, 1956, when a bomb went off on their front porch. Luckily, neither of them was hurt. King rushed home from church. To quiet the crowd gathered in front of his house, he said, “I want you to go home and put down your weapons. We must meet violence with nonviolence.... We must meet hate with love.”
▲ After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on Alabama buses was unconstitutional, bus service started again on December 21, 1956. King proudly stepped onto the first bus that morning.
“We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than to ride in humiliation.”
HOW PEOPLE GOT AROUND
◀ People found many different ways to get around the city during the bus boycott. They walked, rode in taxis, or joined car pools the MIA organized. Others rode mules or hitchhiked, and some white employers drove blacks to work.
MONEY COUNTS
▲ The boycott hurt the bus company’s business. Three-fourths of those who rode the buses were black. Without them, many buses had to be taken out of service. Some bus routes were shut down, and the fare went from 10 to 15 cents. The bus company needed the black riders. The boycotters used the power of their dollars to force the company to meet their demands.
KING’S LIFELONG FRIEND
◀ Ralph Abernathy was the minister of the First Baptist Church. He was 29 years old when the bus boycott began. He became King’s right-hand man in the battle for civil rights. They spent a lot of time in jail together, because they peacefully protested unjust laws.
