Expanding the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
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Expanding the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott In this lesson you will examine three documents about the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) to determine the importance of local activists, especially women, in the civil rights movement. This lesson serves as an introduction to a unit on the civil rights movement. Objectives 1. You will determine the roles of ordinary people, especially women, in the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 2. You will compare and contrast their own narratives of the Montgomery Bus Boycott with the story of local issues and local activists that emerges from three primary sources. Instructions 1. Step 1: Please locate "Expanding the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott" worksheet. Take a moment and brainstorm your thoughts and impressions of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This is an informal writing exercise, so you can create a concept map or write a paragraph. 2. Step 2: We started out by looking at what you already know about the civil rights movement, and now you are going to see how asking questions about women, ordinary people, and local issues widens the picture of civil rights a bit. Please locate the three Montgomery Bus Boycott documents. 3. Step 3: In groups, read the documents and answer the questions. 4. Step 4: Go over students responses. The main points are outlined below: o Women played a major role by organizing the Women's Political Council, by typing up and distributing the notices, by spreading the word in the community. Some of these actions reflected women's roles as secretaries (access to typewriters and mimeographs) and in phone tree networks. Women displayed impressive organization skills, persistence, and purposeful political goals, unlike some previous ideas about women and African Americans in the South in the time period. o Yes, there is evidence of local issues. There is an organized network of the Women's Political Council, already in place after 1946, showing that problems with the busses had been an ongoing problem in Montgomery. Activists show that they know they have power, since they're 3/4 of ridership. They use their position in the community. They come up with a solution that makes sense in Montgomery. o Montgomery's busses were desegregated. Possible problems they still faced: segregated schools and other public facilities, lower wages and poorer housing... 5. Step 5: Reflect (in writing) about how these documents challenge your previous ideas about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the civil rights movement. Historical Context The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) is usually remembered as one of the events that "kickstarted" the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., are usually recalled as the key players. However, this telling of the event leaves out the years-long work of local activists, particularly women, to protest unfair treatment of black riders prior to Parks' arrest; the role these activists played in organizing the boycott; and the universal participation of ordinary black citizens that led to the boycott's success. Traditional narratives of civil rights often focus on the leadership of men like King and Malcolm X and the roles of organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This narrative leaves out or obscures the local issues that led ordinary people, especially women, to work for change in their communities. Because the Montgomery Bus Boycott is a well known story, it is a good case study to draw out the less known story of how local activists were key to propelling the civil rights movement forward. Expanding the Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott 1. Create a concept map or write a paragraph of your impressions of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)? Things to consider: key players, why it happened, its effects, how it relates to the larger civil rights movement. 2. Review the documents. Jo Ann Robinson Describes the Montgomery Bus Boycott Local Activists Call for a Bus Boycott in Montgomery Passengers Board Bus on the First Day of Integrated Public Transportation 3. What do these documents tell us about the role of women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 4. Is there evidence in the documents that indicate how local activists responded to local problems? Please cite specific phrases or sentences. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 5. What change did the activists bring about? What problems do you think the community still faced? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 6. How do the documents add to or challenge what you already knew about the Montgomery Bus Boycott (and the civil rights movement)? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Local Activists Call for a Bus Boycott in Montgomery This leaflet, produced by Jo Ann Robinson and others in response to Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, called for all African Americans to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5. Robinson was president of the Women's Political Council, an organization of African-American professional women who worked for greater political influence from the Black community. She was later arrested for her role in the boycott. SOURCE | Jo Ann Robinson, "[Leaflet calling for boycott]," 2 December 1955, from George Mason University Center for History and New Media and Stanford University School of Education, "Rosa Parks," Historical Thinking Matters, http://historicalthinkingmatters.org//rosaparks/0/inquiry/main/resources/21/ CREATOR | Jo Ann Robinson ITEM TYPE | Pamphlet/Petition Jo Ann Robinson Describes the Montgomery Bus Boycott Here, Jo Ann Robinson explains how she and others produced and distributed the leaflet calling for a boycott in time for thousands of African Americans to stay off the buses on Monday morning, December 5, 1955. Just before she began this work, Robinson and E.D. Nixon had decided over the phone to call for a boycott. I sat down and quickly drafted a message and then called a good friend and colleague... who had access to the college’s mimeograph equipment. When I told him that the WPC was staging a boycott and needed to run off the notices, he told me that he too had suffered embarrassment on the city buses.... Along with two of my most trusted senior students, we quickly agreed to meet almost immediately, in the middle of the night, at the college’s duplicating room. We were able to get three messages to a page... in order to produce the tens of thousands of leaflets we knew would be needed. By 4 a.m. Friday, the sheets had been duplicated, cut in thirds, and bundled.... Between 4 and 7 a.m., the two students and I mapped out distribution routes for the notices. Some of the WPC officers previously had discussed how and where to deliver thousands of leaflets announcing a boycott, and those plans now stood me in good stead.... After class my two students and I quickly finalized our plans for distributing the thousands of leaflets so that one would reach every black home in Montgomery. I took out the WPC membership roster and called [them].... I alerted all of them to the forthcoming distribution of the leaflets, and enlisted their aid in speeding and organizing the distribution network.... Throughout the late morning and early afternoon hours we dropped off tens of thousands of leaflets. Some of our bundles were dropped off at schools.... Leaflets were also dropped off at business places, storefronts, beauty parlors, beer halls, factories, barber shops, and every other available place. Workers would pass along notices both to other employees as well as to customers.... By 2 o’clock thousands of the mimeographed handbills had changed hands many times. Practically every black man, woman, and child in Montgomery knew the plan and was passing the word along.... SOURCE | Excerpt from Jo Ann Robinson’s memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, pp. 45-47, 1987. Knoxville, Tennessee./21/ CREATOR | Jo Ann Robinson ITEM TYPE | Memoir African-American Women Threaten a Bus Boycott in Montgomery This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met. Dear Sir: The Women’s Political Council is very grateful to you and the City Commissioners for the hearing you allowed our representative during the month of March, 1954, when the “city-bus-fare-increase case” was being reviewed. There were several things the