Civil Rights (Montgomery Bus Boycott)

By madmit1321

  • Women's Political Council (WPC)

    The Women's Political Council was a group of black professional founded in 1946, who had their attention on Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses and this is where the roots of the bus boycott began, years before the arrest of Rosa Parks (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).
  • Period: to

    Civil Rights Movement

    The Civil Rights Movement was between the 1950s and 1960s and was a time period of struggle for Black Americans to gain equal rights in the United States. (Not exact time period because there were still efforts before and after these specific dates)

  • WPC meeting with Mayor W.A. Gayle

    In March 1954, the WPC met with Mayor W.A. Gayle and outlined changes they sought from Montgomery's with agreements that would bring equality between white and black people, such as by requiring buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities, but the meeting failed (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).

  • Letter to Mayor Gayle

    WPC president Jo Ann Robinson sent a letter to Maylor Gayle on May 21st reiterating the requests of the groups and telling him that there was talk that about twenty-five organizations were planning a city-wide boycott of buses (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).

  • Challenging Segregation

    A year after the WPC's meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus, as well as 18-year-old Mary Loise Smith 7 months later (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019). These events were not as influential as Rosa Park's, but were important in the event as a whole.

  • Rosa Parks

    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks due to her not sitting in the back of a Montgomery public bus (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).

  • 1-Day Boycott

    Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks' arrest and called for a one-day protest of the city's buses on December 5, 1955, and Robinson prepared leaflets to hand out to black communities (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).
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    Montgomery Bus Boycott

    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was between December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956 and was a 13-month mass protest by boycotting the public bus transportation in Montgomery, Alabama (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).

  • Continued Boycott

    The Montgomery Improvement Association voted to continue the boycott at a mass meeting at Hold Street Baptist Church (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019). On December 8, the MIA issued a formal list of demands, which were not met which led the bus boycott to continue through 1956 (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).

  • Browder v. Gayle

    On June 5, 1956, the federal district court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional (Montgomery Bus Boycott, 2019).