Civil+Rights-KM



THE ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks left her job as a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, and boarded a bus to go home. In 1955 buses in Montgomery reserved seats in the front for the whites and seats in the rear for African Americans. Seats in the middle were open to African Americans, but only if there were few whites on the bus. Rosa Parks took a seat just behind the white section. Soon, all of the seats on the bus were filled. When the bus driver noticed a white man standing, he told Parks and three other African Americans in her row to get up and let the white man sit down. The other three African Americans rose, but Rosa Parks did not. The driver then called the Montgomery police, who took Parks into custody. News of the arrest soon reached E.D. Nixon, a former president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Nixon, who wanted to challenge bus segregation in court, told Parks, "With your permission we can break down segregation on the bus with your case." Parks replied, "If you think it will mean something to Montgomery and do some good, I'll be happy to go along with it." When Rosa Parks agreed to challenge segregation in court, she did not know that her decision could spark a new ear in the civil rights movement. Within days of her arrest, African Americans in Montgomery had organized a boycott of the bus system. Mass protests soon began across the nation. After decades of segregation and inequality, many African Americans had decided the time had come to demand equal rights. The struggle would not be easy. The Supreme Court had declared segregation to be constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The ruling had established the "separate but equal" doctrine. Laws that segregated African Americas were permitted as long as equal facilities were provided for them. After the Plessy decision, laws segregating African Americans and whites spread quickly. These laws, nicknamed "Jim Crow" laws, segregated buses, trains, schools, restaurants, pools, parks, and other public facilities. Usually the "Jim Crow" facilities provided for African Americans were of poorer quality than those provided for whites. Areas without laws requiring segregation often had de facto segregation - segregation by custom and tradition.