Bus Boycott -- Union Station, Montgomery AL - Civil Rights Memorials on Waymarking.com

This sign of history about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, touched off by the arrest of future Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks, at the time just an ordinary tired lady on a bus, located in a small area at the east end of the passenger area of Montgomery Union Station, now the Montgomery Visitor Center.

The sign reads as follows:

"BUS BOYCOTT
The Road to Justice
“My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.”
Mother Pollard

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus for a white man. She was arrested as a refusal violated the segregation laws in effect. Her arrest was the catalyst necessary to stage protests condemning the city segregation laws. Over the weekend following the arrest, local church leaders, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., met with JoAnn Robinson of the Women’s Political Council as well as E. D. Nixon from the NAACP. Together they would organize a large-scale boycott of the Montgomery bus lines. Ministers help to disseminate the word and 40,000 handbills were passed out the black community. On Monday, December 5, the boycott began. Ninety percent of blacks that usually rode the buses began to walk to work. That same evening, nominated by Rufus A. Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).

Reaction and Results
As the boycott continued in 1956, reactionaries in the white community began to persecute the protesters. Police began to harass Blacks who rode in carpools, and Dr. King was arrested on the speeding charge. Terrorism was used to try and intimidate the protesters; Dr. King, Rev. Abernathy, Rev. Graetz, and E. D. Nixon’s homes were bombed. Conspiracy charges are brought against the leaders of the Montgomery improvement Association, but these tactics were unsuccessful in deterring the boycott. In November 1956 the Supreme Court declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional, and the boycott came to a victorious end. The importance of the boycott was clear in the entire nation, and Doctor King’s involvement gave him the credibility he needed to become a national leader of the Civil Rights Movement."

Civil Right Type: Race (includes U.S. Civil Rights movement)

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