Jim Crow on Wheels

Jim Crow On Wheels

In this role-play activity, you act out a scene on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama prior to the famous bus boycott to learn how segregation operated on public transportation. Objectives 1. You will be able to understand the details of how legal segregation operated on public transportation in the South 2. You will be able to personally identify with the unfair treatment suffered by black bus passengers because of racial segregation and understand what motivated the degree of organization and sacrifice that was necessary for the Montgomery bus boycott to succeed. Instructions 1. Step 1: Let’s arrange seventeen chairs in a bus-like formation, with sixteen seats for passengers and one seat for the driver. The masking tape and/or a sign indicates where the “white” section (10 front seats) ends and the “colored” section (6 rear seats) begins. 2. Step 2: We need some volunteer "passengers.” (each volunteer with get one identity card) The roles include:  Front and rear door markers [1 or 2 students to stand where the front and rear doors to the bus would be]  African-American maid and white male child  White housewife  African-American female teacher  African-American female student  African-American male student  White male postal worker  African-American male janitor  African-American waiter/World War II Veteran  African-American female secretary  African-American male student visiting from New York City Each identity card identifies at which stop the passenger will board and what they should do. I will adopt the role of bus driver. Students who do not have a role to play are responsible for the Note Taking Worksheet and will choose three characters and take notes on what those characters do and how it might make them feel. 3. Step 3: This exercise is a role play to show how segregation operated on the Montgomery, Alabama bus system. Hey "passengers" -- the bus driver is the director of the bus, and has the final say on who occupies what seats. 4. Step 4: The "driver" calls out each bus stop and the passengers for that stop board the bus. There are three stops total. The bus driver instructs passengers and makes comments as needed in order to enforce segregation rules. 5. Step 5: Passengers disembark from the bus. As a class, discuss the role play using these questions:  What were the different roles?  What choices did these different people have?  What were the likely consequences of their choices?  What did it feel like to play these roles?  How do you think passengers at the time reacted to these segregation rules?

Historical Context In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the "whites only" section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her action, along with widespread activism by the city's African-American community, launched the Montgomery bus boycott. For nearly a year, black residents refused to ride on Montgomery's buses, and by their actions forced the city to change its laws. Alabama, along with other southern states, had many laws that required the separation of African Americans and whites in public places such as restaurants, swimming pools, and public transportation.

Background Reading on Segregated Buses

This short reading can help you and teachers understand the experience of riding segregated public transportation.

For many ordinary black citizens, some of their most painful and consistently humiliating encounters with white power and injustice took place in public, especially on city buses. In the mid-fifties the automobile had not yet become the ubiquitous presence that it is now, especially not for the thousands of black people in Montgomery who earned their living as maids, cooks, janitors, porters, and the like. High school and college students were also part of the seventeen thousand or so black people who made up some seventy-five percent of the passengers on the segregated buses. During their daily rides, blacks were relegated to the often crowded back area and were forbidden to take vacant seats in the forward white section, even if no white passengers were present. Beyond this were the all-too-common encounters with rude and hostile white bus drivers (there were no black ones) who often called their black passengers “apes,” “niggers,” “black cows,” and other demeaning names. Often they demanded that blacks get up and surrender their seats to white passengers when the white section was full. Black passengers were also required to pay their fare in front and then get off to re-board through the rear door.

SOURCE | Vincent Harding, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Earl Lewis, “We Changed the World, 1945-1970,” in To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans, Kelley and Lewis, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 458-459. CREATOR | Vincent Harding, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Earl Lewis ITEM TYPE | Article/Essay

Jim Crow on Wheels Note Taking Worksheet

Instructions: Choose three characters; for each character, write notes about what they did in the role play and how you think that character would have felt about his or her circumstances.

What did these characters do? What do you think they were feeling?

African-American maid and white male child

White housewife

African-American female teacher

African-American female student

African-American male student

White male postal worker

African-American male janitor

African-American waiter/World

War II Veteran

African-American female secretary

African-American male student visiting from New York City

Information for Bus Drivers and passengers: Black passengers had to pay their fare at the front of the bus, exit, and re-enter through the back door. African-American female domestic workers traveling with white children sat in the "whites only" section of the bus. If the bus boarded more African Americans than seats available, the black passengers had to stand regardless of how many seats were available in the white section of the bus. Many bus drivers were armed and were expected to call the police if segregation laws were not observed. There were rarely, if ever, consequences for a bus driver using threats or violence to force compliance by black passengers.