What Caused The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Have you ever heard about the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Have you ever heard about Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr? If you have, you probably know these people as the faces of the bus boycott that took place in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. If someone were to ask you what you know about this movement, you would probably tell them what you were taught in elementary school. You would say that she and Martin Luther King Jr. are responsible for the success of the boycott. This, however, is not necessarily true. You might also mention something about how Rosa Parks sparked the boycott by refusing to give up her seat to a white man because she had just left work and was too tired to move. Yes, this is part of what caused the boycott in 1956, but
do you know the whole story? Rosa Parks was not the only nor the first African-American woman to refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a European-American.
In fact, a fifteen-year old girl named Claudette Colvin was arrested nine months earlier for the same offense as it is stated in a flyer that was sent out on December 5, 1955, “Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown into jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped.” This incident is what sparked the Browder vs. Gayle case. The article “Browder v. Gayle: The Women Before Rosa Parks” says, “It was four women in particular — Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith — who served as plaintiffs in the legal action challenging Montgomery's segregated public transportation system.It was their case — Browder v. Gayle — that a district court and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court would use to strike down segregation on buses.” The resistance shown by these four women is what caused the desegregation of buses. However, they were not responsible for the success of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott.

The entire African-American community in Montgomery was responsible for the success of the boycott.
A flyer that was sent out December of 1955 it asks that African-Americans stay off city buses, “We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the busses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the bus to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday.” This is telling the African-American community to stay off the busses they ride daily in order to get to where they need to be. If African-Americans stopped riding the buses all together, the bus companies would struggle because most of them provide the major income. This is pointed out in the letter Jo Ann Robinson wrote to the mayor where it states, “Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate.” If only a few people had boycotted city busses, then the boycott would not have been successful. Without the entire community sticking together, they would not have been able to reach their ultimate goal. “More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers,” this statement from Robinson’s letter to Mayor Gayle shows that the community was working with each other for over year before the boycott started and had already began planning
it.

Plans for the city-wide boycott began much before Rosa Parks was arrested. The boycott was not something that was planned over night, it had been planned since 1954 as it is stated in Robinson’s letter to the mayor, “There has been talk… of planning a city-wide boycott of buses.” Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks were not the only ones who planned and carried out the movement. They were many people behind these two faces who made everything possible. People might say that Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr are because we know them as the faces of the movement and textbooks only mention these two people for the most part. They, however, are not completely responsible for the success of the boycott on their own. According to Bayard Rustin’s diary, for example, it is noted that, “42,000 Negroes have not ridden the buses since December 5.” Without these 42,000 people boycotting buses, nothing would have changed. If only two people boycotted, say Parks and King, no progress would have been made because losing two clients out of 42,000 does not cause a big impact on anything or anyone.

In conclusion, there wasn't only one single person responsible for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The entire African-American community in Montgomery, Alabama can be considered responsible for the success of the boycott because they all worked together to desegregate city busses and to stand up for their rights. They found alternate ways to get to where they needed to be without taking city busses. They did this over the course of an entire year together. Many people were involved and worked together to desegregate buses. Parks and King were the faces of the movement, yes, but they were not the only ones behind the success.