C.S.I.Montgomery Bus

Boycott

What is Included

CSI Case: Rosa Parks & Montgomery Bus Boycott

Plenty of Primary Sources

Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott PowerPoint

DBQ

CLASSIF IED

C A S E F I L E

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a year long effort by blacks in Montgomery, AL to end segregation on city buses by boycotting the vehicles.

Activity Directions Work Cooperatively

Read each document thoroughly

Use your Think Marks

Complete handout - “Detective Log”

Complete handout - “Questions to

Consider”

Individually, complete a one-page

summary

Have Fun!!!

Who authored the document?

When was the document authored?

What type of document?

Who was the audience for the document? Why

was it created?

Who was the aggressor in the incident according to the

document?

Document A

Document B

See Handout

Detective Log

Document A

Document B

NEGRO BOYCOTT FIGHTS COLOR LINE ON BUSES: Woman Fined in Row Over SegregationChicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963); Dec 6, 1955;

Document C

AIR RIFLE IS FIRED AT BUS IN DISPUTE OVER SEGREGATIONChicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963); Dec 7, 1955;

Document D

BUS BOYCOTT CONTINUES: Alabama Line Rejects Negro Demands on SeatingNew York Times (1923-Current file); Dec 10, 1955;

Document E

Document F

Image: They Walked To Freedom

Montgomery Advertiser, 1956

Questions to Consider

What questions did you ask while evaluating these sources?

On what points do the accounts agree?

On what points do the accounts differ?

Which of these sources aligns most closely with what you already knew about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott? How so?

Which of these sources is most reliable in determining what actually happened during the Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Why do you think so?

Describe the difficulties in developing an accurate account of historical events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott?

If you were asked to write your own historical account of the events that occurred during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, how would you go about doing so?

Cracking the Case

Based on your analysis of the documents and citing

evidence to support your answer, please write a two-page

summary, which answers the following questions: how

did the arrest of Rosa Parks and the subsequent

Montgomery Bus Boycott represent the struggle of

African Americans throughout the South, what was the

initial response from the plotical leaders of the South,

what was the response from the U.S. Government?

Civil Rights Leader - Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

Who Was Rosa Parks?

She was born 4th February 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama.

She grew up on a farm with her brother, mother and grandparents.

She worked as a seamstress after she left school. Worked as a housekeeper for better-off white

families Worked as a secretary at the NAACP

“She [Rosa Parks] is very quiet, determined, brave, and frugal, not all sophisticated and very churchgoing and orthodox in most of her thinking”

– Virginia Foster (white woman who Rosa Parks worked for)

Standing Up For Her Rights and Sitting Down For Justice

Preparation: From Baton Rouge to

Montgomery

June, 1953 – Blacks in Baton Rouge conducted a

weeklong boycott of city buses.

Boycott cost Baton Rouge 1600/day

Result: Front Row for whites, long backseat for blacks,

and open seating on the rest.

Preparation:

On 1st December 1955 after coming home from a hard days work, Rosa was sitting on the bus when the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man, who couldn’t find a seat in the “white section” of the bus.

“I knew I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”

-Rosa Parks

“..some of us must bear the burden of trying to save the soul of America”

- Martin Luther King

Standing Up For Her Rights and Sitting Down For Justice

A Montgomery (Ala.) Sheriff's Department

booking photo of Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by Dep. Sheriff D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 22, 1956, two months after she refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger. Her action prompted the Montgomery bus boycott and sparked the civil rights movement.

"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver, James Blake, asked.

"No," she answered.

"Well, by God," the driver replied, "I'm going to have you arrested."

"You may do that," Mrs Parks responded.

TTYN: Why, if we are to believe that Rosa Parks had no intention to make headlines or history, did she refuse to stand up?

“Just having paid for a seat and riding for only a couple blocks and then having to stand was too much.”

“These other persons had go on the bus after I dud. It meant that I didn’t have a right to do anything but get on the bus, give them my fare, and then be pushed wherever they wanted me….there had to be a stopping place, and this seemed to have been the place for me to stop being pushed around and to find out what human right I had, if any.”Rosa Parks – NAACP Test Case….Would it

work?

December 2, 1955

Montgomery Advertiser Headline

“Negro Jailed for ‘Overlooking’ Bus Segregation”

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Boycott means: to refuse to buy something or to take part in something as a way of protesting.

By boycotting the buses they hoped to change the laws of segregation. The buses depended on African-Americans to keep their business running.

TTYN: What does boycott mean?

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

A one-day boycott to

thirteen months

Boycott lasted 381 days

More than 30K African

Americans participated

Indictments followed,

including King.

1921 Law – Boycotts illegal

w/o just cause

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Intimidation escalates Bombing, including

King’s home Black Churches targeted

Major concerns prior to the boycott

Would enough black Montgomerians actually walk to work to make an impact? Would enough whites support their actions? What if violence broke out?

A King is Born She inspired Rev. Martin Luther

King and others to protest for equal rights in America.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the mantle of leadership bestowed on MLK

Before the Montgomery Speech, MLK was a relative unknown, but he would emerge as the nation’s greatest and most enduring civil rights leader.

“Since it had to happen, I’m happy it happened to a person like Rosa Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment. But there comes a time that people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired –tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown amazing patience. We have sometimes given out white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from the patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

A King is Born

Success! The boycott ended when the U.S. Supreme

Court ruled that the segregation laws on Alabama’s buses were not legal.

African- Americans walking to work, boycotting the buses.

“Our weapons are protest and love. We are going to fight until we take the heart out of Dixie.” - MLK

Success!Why the Montgomery Succeeded King’s extraordinary gift for leadership Tightly condensed layout of the city Blunders by Montgomery’s white city officials Large number of the city’s blacks who owned cars and thus didn’t have to rely on public transportation Park’s spiritual presence

Rosa Parks sits in the front of a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. on Dec. 21, 1956, the day a Supreme Court ruling banned the segregation of the city's

public transit vehicles went into effect. A year earlier, she was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded bus.

How she sat there,The time right inside a placeSo wrong it was ready.

That trim name withIts dream on a benchTo rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:The clean flame of her gazeCarved by a camera flash.

How she stood upWhen they bent down to retrieveHer purse. That courtesy.

“I had a right” Sadly Rosa died on 24th October 2005. She will be remembered for standing up for what she

believed inspiring others to change the world for better.

“The real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger.”

Rosa Parks, 1992.