The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A Revoltion in the Making

Civil Rights- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. His mother was a

teacher and she taught him to read before he started school. She also tried to

explain prejudice and the Jim Crow laws that separated Whites and Blacks. She

explained the Civil War and how it ended slavery. He had a lot of books at his

parent house. He decided he would do well in a white man’s world. His father was

a preacher. He gave a great example to Martin Luther King. Jr because his father

was a strong man and was helpful in having Blacks get jobs with the police

department and helping black teachers get the same pay as white teachers. Martin

Luther King. Jr. also remembered his father refusing to sit in the back of a shoe

store because he was black.

He went to the school and he was part of the debate team and had to travel

to a different school for the debates. His teacher also was black. His teacher and he

was sitting in the front because the bus was full of people. The driver told them to

sit in the back. They refused then the driver cursed and threatened them, and only

because his teacher was in tears, they moved to the back. He felt terrible , but this gave him determination to fight prejudice.

When Rosa Parks was sitting in a section on a bus just behind the sign

stating “White Only.” then the driver asked her to move the seat. She refused. The

driver called a police and had arrested her. Next day Mr. E.D. Nixon, who was a

civil rights activist, called Martin Luther King, Jr. and asked if he would help

organize a one day bus boycott of the Montgomery buses. So he did it. Next day

the boycott was a success. He was arrested with many others for his involvement

with the boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. 1956, after the Supreme Court of

the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on

buses, blacks and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott,

King was arrested. Later that night, he was at a meeting, a bomb was thrown at his

home. He was fear for his family but everyone was fine. He believed that

organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation know as

Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black

equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily

deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist

violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of

sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil

Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early

1960s.

Almost a year after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the United State

Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow laws were against the laws. Jim Crow Laws

would no longer stand for separation of Whites and Blacks. He had to continues on

with his fight because he knew that some Whites would still do the bad things they

were doing. The Montgomery Bus Boycott that he wrote a book about it, “The

Stride towards Freedom.” he was in New York department store signing

autographs. The black lady asked him if he is really Martin Luther King, Jr. he said

yes. Then she grabbed something in her purse so quickly and stabbed him. He

rushed to the hospital. He could have died from that if he cough or sneezed. He

told the black lady that who stabbed him, is not going to the jail but needed to be

treated at a mental hospital.

In 1963 he led a march in Birmingham, Alabama and it became very

violent. Police used fire hoses and dogs to limit the demonstration. It appeared that

the police were more violent than the demonstrators. They even harmed small

children who were in the march. he urged Blacks to meet violence with non-

violence when something bad happened to them. Jim Crow lost in Birmingham.

Blacks got to drink from the same fountains, eat at the same lunch counters, share

the same bathrooms, and businesses would begin to hire Blacks. He was involved

in many other marches, including the biggest one in Washington. There were

200,000 Blacks and Whites who marched along with him. He was standing on the

steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and there he gave his famous "I Have a Dream"

speech. He was chosen as the man of the year by Time magazine. In 1964, he

received the Nobel Peace Prize. . At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr.,

was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of

his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of

$54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. Along with it came a great

sum of money, which he gave to charity to help Blacks be more equal with Whites.

He led protests in Selma, Alabama and then a fifty-mile march from Selma to

Montgomery, with Blacks and Whites to register the Blacks to vote. He also met

with Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. These Presidents believed in

getting rid of the laws that treated Blacks unfairly. Johnson helped push civil rights

acts through Congress.