C.S.I. Montgomery Bus Boycott

1. C.S.I. Montgomery Bus Boycott

2. What is Included • CSI Case: Rosa Parks & Montgomery Bus Boycott • Plenty of Primary Sources • Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott PowerPoint • DBQ

3. CASE FILE The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a year long effort by blacks in Montgomery, AL to end segregation on city buses by boycotting the vehicles. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott CLASSIFIED

4. Activity Directions • Work Cooperatively • Read each document thoroughly • Use your Think Marks • Complete handout - “Detective Log” • Complete handout - “Questions to Consider” • Individually, complete a one-page summary • Have Fun!!!

5. Detective Log

6. Document A

7. Document B NEGRO BOYCOTT FIGHTS COLOR LINE ON BUSES: Woman Fined in Row Over Segregation Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963); Dec 6, 1955;

8. Document C AIR RIFLE IS FIRED AT BUS IN DISPUTE OVER SEGREGATION Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963); Dec 7, 1955;

9. Document D BUS BOYCOTT CONTINUES: Alabama Line Rejects Negro Demands on Seating New York Times (1923-Current file); Dec 10, 1955;

10. Document E

11. Document F Image: They Walked To Freedom Montgomery Advertiser, 1956

12. Questions to Consider

13. Cracking the Case Based on your analysis of the documents and citing evidence to support your answer, please write a two-page summary, which answers the following questions: how did the arrest of Rosa Parks and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott represent the struggle of African Americans throughout the South, what was the initial response from the plotical leaders of the South, what was the response from the U.S. Government?

14. Civil Rights Leader - Rosa Parks

15. Rosa Parks Who Was Rosa Parks? • She was born 4th February 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. • She grew up on a farm with her brother, mother and grandparents. • She worked as a seamstress after she left school. • Worked as a housekeeper for better-off white families • Worked as a secretary at the NAACP “She [Rosa Parks] is very quiet, determined, brave, and frugal, not all sophisticated and very churchgoing and orthodox in most of her thinking” – Virginia Foster (white woman who Rosa Parks worked for)

16. Standing Up For Her Rights and Sitting Down For Justice Preparation: From Baton Rouge to Montgomery • June, 1953 – Blacks in Baton Rouge conducted a weeklong boycott of city buses. • Boycott cost Baton Rouge 1600/day • Result: Front Row for whites, long backseat for blacks, and open seating on the rest.

17. Standing Up For Her Rights and Sitting Down For Justice Preparation: On 1st December 1955 after coming home from a hard days work, Rosa was sitting on the bus when the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man, who couldn’t find a seat in the “white section” of the bus. “I knew I had the strength of my ancestors with me.” -Rosa Parks “..some of us must bear the burden of trying to save the soul of America” - Martin Luther King

18. A Montgomery (Ala.) Sheriff's Department booking photo of Rosa Parks

19. Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by Dep. Sheriff D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 22, 1956, two months after she refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger. Her action prompted the Montgomery bus boycott and sparked the civil rights movement.

21. "Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver, James Blake, asked. "No," she answered. "Well, by God," the driver replied, "I'm going to have you arrested." "You may do that," Mrs Parks responded.

22. TTYN: Why, if we are to believe that Rosa Parks had no intention to make headlines or history, did she refuse to stand up? “Just having paid for a seat and riding for only a couple blocks and then having to stand was too much.” “These other persons had go on the bus after I dud. It meant that I didn’t have a right to do anything but get on the bus, give them my fare, and then be pushed wherever they wanted me….there had to be a stopping place, and this seemed to have been the place for me to stop being pushed around and to find out what human right I had, if any.” Rosa Parks – NAACP Test Case….Would it work?

23. December 2, 1955 Montgomery Advertiser Headline “Negro Jailed for ‘Overlooking’ Bus Segregation”

24. The Montgomery Bus Boycott Boycott means: to refuse to buy something or to take part in something as a way of protesting. TTYN: What does boycott mean? • By boycotting the buses they hoped to change the laws of segregation. The buses depended on African-Americans to keep their business running.

25. The Montgomery Bus Boycott • A one-day boycott to thirteen months • Boycott lasted 381 days • More than 30K African Americans participated • Indictments followed, including King. • 1921 Law – Boycotts illegal w/o just cause

26. The Montgomery Bus Boycott • Major concerns prior to the boycott • Would enough black Montgomerians actually walk to work to make an impact? • Would enough whites support their actions? • What if violence broke out? • Intimidation escalates • Bombing, including King’s home • Black Churches targeted

27. A King is Born • She inspired Rev. Martin Luther King and others to protest for equal rights in America. • The Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the mantle of leadership bestowed on MLK • Before the Montgomery Speech, MLK was a relative unknown, but he would emerge as the nation’s greatest and most enduring civil rights leader.

28. A King is Born • “Since it had to happen, I’m happy it happened to a person like Rosa Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment. But there comes a time that people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired –tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown amazing patience. We have sometimes given out white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from the patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

29. Success! African- Americans walking to work, boycotting the buses. • “Our weapons are protest and love. We are going to fight until we take the heart out of Dixie.” - MLK • The boycott ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation laws on Alabama’s buses were not legal.

30. Success! • Why the Montgomery Succeeded • King’s extraordinary gift for leadership • Tightly condensed layout of the city • Blunders by Montgomery’s white city officials • Large number of the city’s blacks who owned cars and thus didn’t have to rely on public transportation • Park’s spiritual presence

31. Rosa Parks sits in the front of a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. on Dec. 21, 1956, the day a Supreme Court ruling banned the segregation of the city's public transit vehicles went into effect. A year earlier, she was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded bus.

32. How she sat there, The time right inside a place So wrong it was ready. That trim name with Its dream on a bench To rest on. Her sensible coat. Doing nothing was the doing: The clean flame of her gaze Carved by a camera flash. How she stood up When they bent down to retrieve Her purse. That courtesy.

33. “I had a right” • Sadly Rosa died on 24th October 2005. • She will be remembered for standing up for what she believed inspiring others to change the world for better. “The real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger.” Rosa Parks, 1992.