60th anniversary of Montgomery Bus Boycott observed
7th December 2015 · 0 Comments
Sixty years ago, the Montgomery Improvement Association launched a boycott in Alabama that forever changed the course of U.S. history and sparked the Historic Civil Rights Movement.
Led by a young minister named the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott — which came just a year after the landmark Brown, v. The Board of Education and the same year that 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by whites in Mississippi — lasted an entire year and created a blueprint for underrepresented groups seeking to galvanize their power and use their spending power as leverage in dealing with elected dealing with elected officials and government agencies that violate their constitutional rights and take them for granted.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized in protest of the arrest of Rosa Parks, a local seamstress, for failing to surrender her seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. Although few of them owned cars, Montgomery’s Black residents refused to ride the city buses to work or anywhere else until they were integrated, and their battle led them to the U.S. Supreme Court.
They organized carpools, rode bicycles or walked for an entire year to gain political and economic leverage over those who were determined to impose second-class citizenship on them.
When the High Court declared the segregation of public buses unconstitutional, more than a year later, Montgomery’s Black citizens walked their way into American history and birthed a spirit of non-violent mass resistance that would sweep the nation.
The boycott also catapulted a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into national prominence as the insightful, principled leader of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.
Lenette Washington Bailey remembers vivid details from Dec. 1, 1955 and the days that followed Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat.
Parks, who is widely known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” discredited with setting the spark that triggered a civil-rights campaign that spanned more than a decade and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
But Bailey’s memories of those fateful days six decades ago begin long before Parks became a civil rights heroine.
A student at Alabama State University at the time, Bailey helped to distribute leaflets announcing the Montgomery Bus Boycott and took part in the first mass meeting, attended by thousands.
Montgomery television station WFSA reported that Bailey and five other participants in the bus protest took part in an event at ASU called “I Was There,” giving interviews from their unique perspectives on events helping add to what’s been written in U.S. history books.
“That first mass meeting was at Holt Street Baptist Church and that was my family’s church. I was baptized there so I felt honored and you know I was going to be there,” Bailey said. “I think they said there was around 15,000 people there but I think there was more than that because there was so many outside that couldn’t even get inside the building. That was an exciting moment”
Oral history interviews were conducted Monday night, November 30, 2015, at the Levi Watkins Learning Center’s Lecture Hall. It marked the launch of a year-long history project by the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African American Culture at ASU, focused on the bus boycott.
“It’s the voices, the people who participated in the boycott and getting their reminiscences about their experiences, what they remember about the mass meetings, walking, the various fundraising efforts, the transportation network, all the facets of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” ASU Archivist Dr. Howard Robinson told WFSA. “You get a perspective on historical events that is sometimes hard to translate into the written word.”
Other interviews included:
• The Rev. Robert & Mrs. Jean Graetz, who were on the front lines of the bus protest. Rev. Graetz was the pastor of an African-American Lutheran Church in Montgomery.
• Charles Varner, an Alabama State University student who attended boycott mass meetings and supported the protest against segregated bus service.
• Dr. Ralph Bryson, an Alabama State University professor who attended Dexter Avenue Baptist Church during the boycott and supported the bus protest.
• Nelson Malden, an Alabama State University student and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s barber who attended Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, frequented boycott mass meetings and supported the protest against Jim Crow buses.
Malden was Dr. King’s barber for six years while he was in Montgomery and he discussed their relationship and shared stories from the barbershop.
“He was a great debater so we had very lively conversations on many evenings,” he said. “I think it’s important for young people to understand what happened back during that time and we’re the people who lived through these situations so I think they’ll be very proud to hear some of our stories that actually happened while the movement was going on in Montgomery.”
The accounts and memories are helping paint a more vivid and accurate picture of what happened during an important episode in American history 60 years ago, allowing Alabama State to continue building a repository of invaluable historical information.
“I think it will illuminate this important historical event, an event that really had reverberations not only around this nation but around the world,” Dr. Robinson told WFSA. “We have people here in Montgomery today who were a part of that. We want to celebrate them and we also want to preserve what they’ve done and what they’ve participated in for posterity. “
Commemorative events continued throughout the week at Alabama State University, including the dedication of a brand new state historic marker (60 years to the day) on Tuesday, Dec. 1, in front of ASU’s Council Hall that commemorates Rosa Parks’ bravery and the notable efforts of Jo Ann Robinson, legendary civil rights attorney Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon, ASU family members and members of the Women’s Political Council in organizing and mimeographing fliers and providing leadership, which promoted and made the bus boycott successful.
The Rev, Norwood Thompson Jr., president of the New Orleans affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, recalled last week how Dr. King traveled to Baton Rouge, La. to meet with the Rev. T.J. Jemison to learn more about the Baton Rouge boycott before putting the Montgomery bus boycott into motion.
“Dr. King came to Baton Rouge to learn all he could about the boycott there in order to improve the chances for success in Montgomery,” Thompson told The Louisiana Weekly.
Thompson said unity, pride and principles were major factors in the success of the Montgomery bus boycott.
“The folks were together,” he told The Louisiana Weekly. “Back then they did stick together. Today, there seems to be a lack of unity among ourselves. There is a lot of violence among young people and many of them don’t appear to know what our forefathers went through to achieve affirmative action, desegregation and voting rights. Although we have come far, with the steps we have taken forward, we have also taken some steps back.”
With a nod to King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech, Thompson says he has penned a speech titled “I’m Having A Nightmare.”
“I’m having a nightmare when I see how young people are lost and how our old people are no longer respected,” he told The Louisiana Weekly. “The other day there was a killing at Canal and Rampart — it’s truly getting out of hand.”
Thompson said it is important that future generations of Black leaders know their history and build upon the successful strategies and campaigns of their predecessors.
“The people involved in the Montgomery bus boycott were courageous,” Thompson said. “They were resourceful, resilient and willing to sacrifice. They walked to work, stayed together and prayed together. God blessed that whole year that they stayed out and things turned around… We got to do it together.”
Last month, the University of Missouri System President announced his resignation after 30 Mizzou football players threatened to boycott upcoming games in support of Black students’ calls for greater diversity and better treatment by the university.
“I was so elated to see that they stuck together as a team,” Thompson told The Louisiana Weekly. “I’m so proud of these young football players, that they stuck together. The university knew that it was going to lose millions of dollars. We got to have more economic campaigns like that. I’m so happy that the Missouri football team decided to take a stand and it went national.
“I think our forefathers told us about the value of our dollar and we still don’t get it,” Thompson added.
Thompson recalled how years ago he asked then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to enact a moment of silence in honor of Dr. King at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. While some didn’t think the idea would take flight, Rozelle agreed to honor the request and Southern University’s Human Jukebox spelled out “MLK” on the football field in the Superdome. The NFL invited Thompson to view the moment of silence in honor of King from one of the suites in the Superdome.
The Rev. Raymond Brown, a New Orleans activist and president of National Action Now, said the University of Missouri boycott shows that boycotts are still an effective tool for promoting positive change.
“They obviously still work,” he told The Louisiana Weekly. “When it comes to boycotts, you have to know what you are up against and make strategic moves. It’s still a good move to hit those who are playing hard ball with you in the pocketbook. Money still talks.”
“I wouldn’t say we need another Montgomery Bus Boycott as much as we need to get back to who we were when we organized and supported the boycott,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “Even in the midst of domestic terrorism being carried out by white supremacists and Jim Crow laws designed to control, demean and humiliate Black people, we were stronger and better-equipped to survive in the Deep South. That’s because we had teachers and families that loved and protected us, had a sense of Black pride and looked out for one another because we realized that all we had was us. Back then, Black people were willing to stand up for what they believed in and had unity of purpose.”
Somewhere along the way something changed, Aha added.
“With ‘integration,’ many of us seem to have forgotten who we are,” he said. “Integration destroyed many Black businesses and financial institutions, closed Black schools and convinced some of us that the white man’s ice is colder and his sugar was sweeter. We lost many of the farms Black families once owned and along with them the freedom, autonomy and economic power those farms represented. And along with them our self-sufficiency and economic independence.”
Aha said that as bad as things appear to be now, all is not lost.
“As one of my mentors, Professor James Small of City University of New York, says all the time, the biggest thing is that we just have to get back to being us,” Aha told The Louisiana Weekly. “Our ancestors teach us that who we are is who we were and that ‘I am because we are.’
“When we tap into our past historical greatness and regain a sense of who we are, there is no limit to how far we can go.”
Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.
This article originally published in the December 7, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
