Randall  Kennedy. From Small Beginnings: the  Montgomery Bus Boycott

Thursday, December 23, 1999

The most inspiring single event in the practice of American democracy in
the 20th century occurred over the course of 382 days, from Dec. 5,
1955, to Dec. 21, 1956. That event was the Montgomery (Ala.) bus
boycott.

The boycott began when Rosa Parks, a seamstress and civil-rights activist, refused a bus driver's order that she give up the seat she
occupied to make way for white patrons. While three blacks on either side of her relinquished their seats as demanded in deference to this custom of white supremacy, she stayed put. When police officers boarded the bus and again demanded that she move, she again refused.  "Why do you push us around?" Parks reportedly asked. "I don't know," one of the officers replied, ''but the law is the law, and you are under arrest."

From small beginnings …

Parks' arrest set off a chain of events that changed America. In protest, leading figures in the black community created a new organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), called for a boycott of the buses and selected a 26-year-old clergyman as the spokesman for their cause. His name was Martin Luther King. Jr. On the first evening of the boycott, with hardly any preparation, Rev. King delivered an address equally as stirring as the more well-known speeches he would give in the 1960s
when he had become the established leader of the civil rights revolution.

My friends, we are here for serious business. We are here in a general sense because first and foremost, we are American citizens, and we are determined to acquire our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. We are here because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth. But we are here in a specific sense because of the bus situation in Montgomery. We are here because we are determined to get the situation corrected.

For King and his colleagues, getting the situation corrected initially meant securing merely what they perceived as decent treatment within the rules of segregation. He started with seemingly small demands. At first King did not demand the scrapping of racial segregation (a practice that continued even though Brown v. Board of Education had invalidated segregation in public schools the previous year). All King sought initially was for drivers to be told to stop calling blacks "niggers," to stop shrinking the sections set aside for blacks when crowded conditions forced white latecomers to stand and to stop the cruel practice of pulling away from black riders after they had paid their fares up front but before they had reached the doorways in the back through which Negro passengers were forced to enter.

Here fate interceded in a paradoxical form. The attorney for the bus company, a Harvard-educated, hard-line segregationist lawyer named Jack Crenshaw, stymied all efforts aimed at striking a compromise settlement. This radicalized King and his followers and prompted them to demand an end to segregation on the buses. After having called for only a one-day boycott, King upped the ante by calling for a strike of indefinite duration.

A year of protest

King's followers responded magnificently. Poor people braved the elements and the ire of their white bosses by walking to work. Affluent blacks pitched in by giving rides to those in need. Eventually, the black community created a virtual transportation company of its own that operated with an effectiveness that even its enemies grudgingly conceded. To keep the community abreast of developments, the MIA published a newsletter. And to ensure an ongoing and active rapport between leaders,the MIA sponsored weekly mass meetings that rotated from church to church. The meetings, King recalled, "cut across class lines. ... The Ph.Ds and the no 'Ds were bound together in a common venture."

Repeatedly over the course of the year, as various crises arose, the black community of Montgomery discovered within itself talents and capacities it had never before appreciated. Upward of 90% of the black, bus-riding population -- some 40,000 people -- honored the plea to stay off the buses.

White supremacists responded, too, but without as much success. Every act of harassment and intimidation they unleashed was met by an enhanced commitment on the part of Montgomery's aroused black citizenry. When local police arrested King for violating a state law prohibiting consumer boycotts, other leaders of the MIA insisted that they, too, be arrested. When King's home was bombed, the MIA responded by challenging in federal court the constitutionality of the segregation ordinance it had come to detest. It was the success of this suit that ended segregation on the buses and cleared the way for ending the boycott.

The day after the Supreme Court informed state and local officials of their decision in favor of the protesters, King and other boycott leaders quietly boarded a bus and without incident occupied seats near the front in a section that had previously been reserved for whites only.

Toward a better place for all

For those who seek glimpses of communities in which self-determination constitutes a liberating passion rather than a distasteful chore, black Montgomery in 1955-56 offers a fine example. Two aspects of the protest are especially noteworthy. One had to do with the attentiveness of the protesters to the morality of the means they used to accomplish their ends. Arguing in Ghandi-like fashion that the means are the ends in the making, King stressed to all -- supporters, opponents, as well as onlookers -- the need for the boycott to be disciplined, nonviolent, unembittered and redemptive. In the days before he boarded the bus to signal victory, King authored a memo that the MIA distributed widely. It read in part:

The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat. ... If cursed, do not curse back. If pushed, do not push back. If struck, do not strike back, but only evidence love, and good will at all times. ... According to your own ability and personality, do not be afraid to experiment with new and creative techniques for achieving reconciliation and social change.

The boycott's universalism was another noteworthy feature. True, initially King did make frequent appeals to racial pride, challenging his black constituency to strike a blow for their own emancipation. But as time went on, he emphatically transformed the boycott into a more ambitious and inclusive undertaking. "We are not struggling merely for the rights of Negroes," King declared one evening at a MIA prayer meeting. "We are determined to make America a better place for all people." That is one of the reasons why all Americans, indeed all persons wherever they may reside, can properly recall the Montgomery bus boycott with amazement, respect and gratitude.