Full transcript
0:01So after Eisenhower's comments,
0:06a lot of the air is taken out of the
0:09sales of the civil rights movement,
0:12right? This has been decades and decades
0:13of work to get any sense of support for
0:17civil rights on a federal level. The
0:20Supreme Court has handed down the Brown
0:22decision. The uh the Brown two decision
0:25has sort of pulled that back and
0:27softened it up a little bit.
0:29Uh, and President Eisenhower, who's in
0:32office at the time, has said, "We've
0:34done everything we could do with civil
0:36rights. This is a local issue. It's not
0:38something the federal government can do
0:40anything about." And it's at this moment
0:43that the movement shifts away from the
0:46leadership of the NAACP, away from uh
0:50expecting federal support to a more
0:52grassroots movement. Um, again, there
0:55were lots of local civil rights
0:59organizations in the south uh during the
1:03years prior to the Montgomery bus
1:05boycott which happened in 1955.
1:08But the Montgomery boycott is really
1:10sort of a a spark that ignites the civil
1:14rights movement uh and gets it
1:19gets it rolling among regular everyday
1:21people. Again, you know, up to this
1:23point, the people who you heard talking
1:25about civil rights tended to be lawyers.
1:28They tended to be well-educated
1:31uh people in the NAACP. But from this
1:34point forward, you're also going to hear
1:37from people who were truck drivers,
1:40people who were domestics, people who
1:42were school teachers. It was going to be
1:44regular everyday people who were pushing
1:46civil rights movement forward by testing
1:49the letter of the law. That's what the
1:51Montgomery bus boycott did. It was set
1:53in motion by the arrest of Rosa Parks on
1:56the 1st of December 1955.
1:59Um, and it is a direct response to the
2:03Brown 2 decision of earlier that summer.
2:06Parks was not the first woman to be
2:08arrested in Montgomery. which was
2:09actually the fourth that fall. But the
2:12previous three women had been younger
2:14women uh when they were arrested on
2:17buses in Montgomery for refusing to move
2:22so that white patrons could have their
2:24seats. Uh they had reacted, I think, in
2:28a way that's very understandable, and
2:29that was loudly and with anger. They had
2:32been arrested, but the the general
2:35narrative around those women had been
2:38that they had they had not acted in ways
2:41that were particularly sympathetic,
2:43right? So, they weren't going to
2:45encourage more people to involve
2:46themselves in the bus boycott because
2:49they looked like troublemakers.
2:51Parks could play a role. Now, again,
2:54Parks wasn't new to the civil rights
2:56movement. Um, people tend to remember
2:57her as, you know, this poor old woman
3:00who was asked to move and was too tired
3:03to move and decided that was a moment
3:05she couldn't take anymore. Uh, the
3:07reality was Rosa Parks grew up in an
3:10activist household. She had stood up to
3:12white authority time and time again her
3:14entire life. But she knew that when she
3:17was asked to move and refused to do it,
3:19that as an older woman, she was
3:22middle-aged, she could sort of play
3:25towards people's sympathy. Um, so she
3:29reacted quietly uh but insistently. Uh
3:33and so when she got arrested, it sort of
3:35opened up the door locally for more
3:37people to involve themselves to stick up
3:39for this, you know, supposedly poor old
3:42woman who had been taken advantage of.
3:45Immediately, a new Baptist minister in
3:47town, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sprung
3:50into action. Now, again,
3:54the movement was kind of lucky that it
3:56happened to be Dr. King that was in
3:58Montgomery at the time. King was new. He
4:01was young. Um, he didn't have many
4:05relationships with white authorities in
4:07town. And you know, the reason why a lot
4:09of other black ministers of Montgomery
4:12wouldn't do much was because they had
4:14spent years building relationships with
4:16white authorities and acting as sort of
4:18protectors for the congregants and they
4:21didn't want to lose that that capital.
4:23So when King
4:26finds himself in this place at this
4:28time, he kind of feels like he doesn't
4:31have much to lose. And again, he has
4:34been training for the civil rights
4:35movement for the better part of his
4:37adolescence and early adulthood, too. So
4:41King forms an organization out of the
4:44Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where he
4:47was minister called the Montgomery uh
4:49improvement association. And what the
4:52MIA did was umbrella a number of
4:56sympathetic church congregations in
4:58town. It joined a black union and
5:02brought it into the fold. It organized a
5:06couple of women's organizations in town.
5:10All of whom were sympathetic to the
5:12cause but hadn't been working together.
5:15and MIA kind of brings them all and sits
5:17them down in one room so they can work
5:20in a coordinated fashion to organize
5:22this bus boycott. Uh, and of course what
5:25the bus boycott is meant to do is to
5:27demonstrate that companies who hold a
5:30segregationist line are going to lose
5:32money. Uh now the catch of course was
5:36just finding a way to organize rides and
5:40keep people safe while they didn't ride
5:42these buses and hurt the bus company's
5:44business. Uh this lasts for a year that
5:48entire year. The MIA makes a couple of
5:52demands, three demands actually. Uh they
5:56want bus drivers to treat black riders
5:58with respect. They want to have black
6:00drivers hired to work in black
6:02neighborhoods. And they also want a
6:05first come, first- seated policy where
6:07blacks can't be removed. The company
6:09stubbornly refused to to listen to these
6:12demands and ran its buses empty for the
6:14better part of the day. Uh and
6:18eventually after 391 days, they fold
6:21because they got tired of losing money.
6:24I think the bus boycott was important
6:26for a couple of different reasons. Um,
6:29first thing was the fact that all these
6:32different groups came together showed
6:33how frustrated they were as black
6:35activists with the news they were
6:39getting about the lack of initiative
6:42from Washington DC and the end of what
6:45NAACP could do for them. So they were
6:48frustrated and ready to take matters
6:50into their own hands. Uh I think a a
6:53second thing that it demonstrated was
6:55that these activists were in fact
6:57capable of organizing
6:59uh across class lines, across gender
7:02lines and they were willing to listen to
7:04new leaders. So that was particularly
7:06important. Uh and I think you know a
7:09final thing is is that uh the Montgomery
7:13bus boycott established Dr. King as the
7:17preeminent leader of the civil rights
7:18movement. He becomes a household name
7:21whether for good or for bad after this
7:24point in time. He will then play a
7:26leadership role in building the Southern
7:29Christian Leadership Conference, the
7:30SELC, which would take a real
7:35role in organizing other boycots and
7:39voter registration drives in other
7:41southern cities across the South. So out
7:44of King's leadership and this bus
7:46boycott comes a network of civil rights
7:49organizers who now have a model of sorts
7:53to follow when attacking segregation in
7:56other towns. So from this point forward,
7:59the civil rights movement has been
8:00rejuvenated after the letdown of the
8:03Brown 2 decision.