Let Nobody Turn Us Around An African American Anthology

Many historians have dated the beginning of the modern civil rights movement to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956, which drew national attention and effectively ended segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Though this boycott is often remembered because it led to the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., more importantly it was a wide-ranging, grassroots protest movement. To a considerable degree, it was initiated by two women in the Montgomery community, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (1912–1992) and Rosa Parks (1913–2005).

Robinson was born in Georgia and earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University before she moved to Montgomery and accepted a post as a professor at Alabama State College. Later she joined the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and became president of the Women’s Political Council of Montgomery. Like many African-American residents of her community, Robinson suffered abuse and humiliation on city buses, and she repeatedly demanded that city authorities rectify the situation. In May 1954—more than a year before most Americans had ever heard of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr.—Robinson penned a letter to Montgomery’s mayor threatening a large-scale boycott of the city bus system. Later, as an active member of the Montgomery Improvement Association, she played an important role in organizing and sustaining the protest. In the early 1960s Robinson relocated to Los Angeles, where she taught in the public schools until her retirement in 1976.

Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She was a well-respected seam-stress and an active member of the NAACP when she broke a local segregation ordinance, on December 1, 1955, by refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man who had boarded after her. Her subsequent arrest helped spark the famous boycott and led her to earn the title “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” Parks subsequently was employed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Detroit, Michigan, and later worked for Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

The Women’s Political Council is very grateful to you and the City Commissioners for the hearing you allowed our representatives during the month of March, 1954, when the “city-bus-fare-increase case” was being reviewed.

We are happy to report that busses have begun stopping at more corners now in some sections where Negroes live than previously. However, the same practices seating and boarding the bus continue.

Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate.

More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers.

There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of busses. We, sir, do not feel that forceful measures are necessary in bargaining for a convenience which is right for all bus passengers. We, the Council, believe that when this matter has been put before you and the Commissioners, that agreeable terms can be met in a quiet and sensible manner to the satisfaction of all concerned.

Many of our Southern cities in neighboring states have practiced the policies we seek without incident whatsoever. Atlanta, Macon and Savannah in Georgia have done this for years. Even Mobile, in our own state, does this and all the passengers are satisfied.

Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses. We do not want this.

I had left my work at the men’s alteration shop, a tailor shop in the Montgomery Fair department store, and as I left work, I crossed the street to a drugstore to pick up a few items instead of trying to go directly to the bus stop. And when I had finished this, I came across the street and looked for a Cleveland Avenue bus that apparently had some seats on it. At that time it was a little hard to get a seat on the bus. But when I did get to the entrance of the bus, I got in line with a number of other people who were getting on the same bus.

As I got up on the bus and walked to the seat I saw there was only one vacancy that was just back of where it was considered the white section. So this was the seat that I took, next to the aisle, and a man was sitting next to me. Across the aisle there were two women, and there were a few seats at this point in the very front of the bus that was called the white section. I went on to one stop and I didn’t particularly notice who was getting on the bus, didn’t particularly notice the other people getting on. And on the third stop there were some people getting on, and at this point all of the front seats were taken. Now in the beginning, at the very first stop I had got on the bus, the back of the bus was filled up with people standing in the aisle and I don’t know why this one vacancy that I took was left, because there were quite a few people already standing toward the back of the bus. The third stop is when all the front seats were taken, and this one man was standing and when the driver looked around and saw he was standing, he asked the four of us, the man in the seat with me and the two women across the aisle, to let him have those front seats.

At his first request, didn’t any of us move. Then he spoke again and said, “You’d better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” At this point, of course, the passenger who would have taken the seat hadn’t said anything. In fact, he never did speak to my knowledge. When the three people, the man who was in the seat with me and the two women, stood up and moved into the aisle, I remained where I was. When the driver saw that I was still sitting there, he asked if I was going to stand up. I told him, no, I wasn’t. He said, “Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have you arrested.” I told him to go on and have me arrested.

He got off the bus and came back shortly. A few minutes later, two policemen got on the bus, and they approached me and asked if the driver had asked me to stand up, and I said yes, and they wanted to know why I didn’t. I told them I didn’t think I should have to stand up…. They placed me under arrest then and had me to get in the police car, and I was taken to jail and booked on suspicion, I believe…. They had to determine whether or not the driver wanted to press charges or swear out a warrant, which he did. Then they took me to jail and I was placed in a cell. In a little while I was taken from the cell, and my picture was made and fingerprints taken. I went back to the cell then, and a few minutes later I was called back again, and when this happened I found out that Mr. E. D. Nixon and Attorney and Mrs. Clifford Durr had come to make bond for me.

In October 1955, Mary Louise Smith, an eighteen-year-old black girl, was arrested and fined for refusing to move to the rear of the bus. Her case was unpublicized and no one knew about it until after her arrest and conviction. She, too, was found guilty; she paid her fine and kept on riding the bus.

Intermittently, twenty to twenty-five thousand black people in Montgomery rode city buses, and I would estimate that, up until the boycott of December 5, 1955, about three out of five had suffered some unhappy experience on the public transit lines. But the straw that broke the camel’s back came on Thursday, December 1, 1955, when an incident occurred which was almost a repeat performance of the Claudette Colvin case.

In the afternoon of Thursday, December 1, a prominent black woman named Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat for a white man. Mrs. Parks was a medium-sized, cultured mulatto woman; a civic and religious worker; quiet, unassuming, and pleasant in manner and appearance; dignified and reserved; of high morals and a strong character. She was—and still is, for she lives to tell the story—respected in all black circles. By trade she was a seamstress, adept and competent in her work.

Tired from work, Mrs. Parks boarded a bus. The “reserved seats” were partially filled, but the seats just behind the reserved section were vacant, and Mrs. Parks sat down in one. It was during the busy evening rush hour. More black and white passengers boarded the bus, and soon all the reserved seats were occupied. The driver demanded that Mrs. Parks get up and surrender her seat to a white man, but she was tired from her work. Besides, she was a woman, and the person waiting was a man. She remained seated. In a few minutes, police summoned by the driver appeared, placed Mrs. Parks under arrest, and took her to jail.

It was the first time the soft-spoken, middle-aged woman had been arrested. She maintained decorum and poise, and the word of her arrest spread. Mr. E. D. Nixon, a longtime stalwart of our NAACP branch, along with liberal white attorney Clifford Durr and his wife Virginia, went to jail and obtained Mrs. Parks’s release on bond. Her trial was scheduled for Monday, December 5, 1955.

The news traveled like wildfire into every black home. Telephones jangled; people congregated on street corners and in homes and talked. But nothing was done. A numbing helplessness seemed to paralyze everyone. Very few stayed off the buses the rest of that day or the next. There was fear, discontent, and uncertainty. Everyone seemed to wait for someone to do something, but nobody made a move. For that day and a half, black Americans rode the buses as before, as if nothing had happened. They were sullen and uncommunicative, but they rode the buses. There was a silent, tension-filled waiting. For blacks were not talking loudly in public places—they were quiet, sullen, waiting. Just waiting! Thursday evening came and went.

Thursday night was far spent, when, at about 11:30 P.M., I sat alone in my peaceful single-family dwelling on a quiet street. I was thinking about the situation. Lost in thought, I was startled by the telephone’s ring. Black attorney Fred Gray, who had been out of town all day, had just gotten back and was returning the phone message I had left for him about Mrs. Parks’s arrest. Attorney Gray, though a very young man, had been one of my most active colleagues in our previous meetings with bus company officials and Commissioner Birmingham. A Montgomery native who had attended Alabama State and been one of my students, Fred Gray had gone on to law school in Ohio before returning to his home town to open a practice with the only other black lawyer in Montgomery, Charles Langford.

Fred Gray and his wife Bernice were good friends of mine, and we talked often. In addition to being a lawyer, Gray was a trained, ordained minister of the gospel, actively serving as assistant pastor of Holt Street Church of Christ.

Tonight his voice on the phone was very short and to the point. Fred was shocked by the news of Mrs. Parks’s arrest. I informed him that I already was thinking that the WPC should distribute thousands of notices calling for all bus riders to stay off the buses on Monday, the day of Mrs. Parks’s trial. “Are you ready?” he asked. Without hesitation, I assured him that we were. With that he hung up, and I went to work.

I made some notes on the back of an envelope: “The Women’s Political Council will not wait for Mrs. Parks’s consent to call for a boycott of city buses. On Friday, December 2, 1955, the women of Montgomery will call for a boycott to take place on Monday, December 5.”

Some of the WPC officers previously had discussed plans for distributing thousands of notices announcing a bus boycott. Now the time had come for me to write just such a notice. I sat down and quickly drafted a message and then called a good friend and colleague, John Cannon, chairman of the business department at the college, 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. Like myself, he had been hurt and angry. He said that he would happily assist me. 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, greatly reducing the number of pages that had to be mimeographed 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. Each leaflet read:

Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off of all buses Monday.

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. We outlined our routes, arranged the bundles in sequences, stacked them in our cars, and arrived at my 8 A.M. class, in which both young men were enrolled, with several minutes to spare. We weren’t even tired or hungry. Just like me, the two students felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction at being able to contribute to the cause of justice.

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 the former president, Dr. Mary Fair Burks, then the Pierces, the Glasses, Mrs. Mary Cross, Mrs. Elizabeth Arrington, Mrs. Josie Lawrence, Mrs. Geraldine Nesbitt, Mrs. H. Councill Trenholm, Mrs. Catherine N. Johnson, and a dozen or more others. I alerted all of them to the forthcoming distribution of the leaflets, and enlisted their aid in speeding and organizing the distribution network. Each would have one person waiting at a certain place to take a package of notices as soon as my car stopped and the young men could hand them a bundle of leaflets.

Then I and my two student helpers set out. 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, where both students and staff members helped distribute them further and spread the word for people to read the notices and then pass them on to neighbors. 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.

During those hours of crucial work, nothing went wrong. Suspicion was never raised. The action of all involved was so casual, so unconcerned, so nonchalant, that suspicion was never raised, and neither the city nor its people ever suspected a thing! We never missed a spot. And no one missed a class, a job, or a normal routine. Everything was done by the plan, with perfect timing. 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. No one knew where the notices had come from or who had arranged for their circulation, and no one cared. Those who passed them on did so efficiently, quietly, and without comment. But deep within the heart of every black person was a joy he or she dared not reveal….

Before Monday was half gone, Negroes had made history. Never before had they united in such a manner. There was open respect and admiration in the eyes of many whites who had looked on before, dubious and amused. Even clerks in dime stores, all white, were more cordial. They were heard to add, after a purchase by a black customer, “Y’all come back to see us,” which was a very unusual occurrence. The black customers held their heads higher. They felt reborn, important for the first time. A greater degree of race pride was exhibited. Many were themselves surprised at the response of the masses, and could not explain, if they had wanted to, what had changed them overnight into fearless, courageous, proud people, standing together for human dignity, civil rights, and, yes, self-respect! There was a stick-togetherness that drew them like a magnet. They showed a genuine fondness for one another. They were really free—free inside! They felt it! Acted it! Manifested it in their entire beings! They took great pride in being black.

Six thousand black people, along with local reporters, packed Holt Street Baptist Church that night, December 5, 1955, for the first mass meeting of the bus boycott. In the main auditorium, the balcony, the basement, the aisles, steps, the front, side, and back yards, and for three blocks up and down Holt Street, people crowded near to hear what was said. Loudspeakers were set up so that crowds who sat in parked cars two blocks away could hear. Police cars patrolling the area warned those inside the church to turn down the volume, which was disturbing the people outside, but no one paid any attention. The volume stayed loud.

White journalists from Montgomery and other nearby places were on hand to report the news of the boycott. Cameras flashed repeatedly, taking pictures of the thousands gathered in the church. So intent were the people on what was being said that the photographers went unnoticed.

The pulpit was jammed with Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Catholic, and other ministers, and with organization officials. They conducted a spirited devotion of prayer and hymns. Prayers were offered for “endurance, tolerance, faith in God.” There were prayers for the city commissioners; for “misguided whites”; for the weak; and for all races and nations. People felt the spirit. Their enthusiasm inundated them, and they overflowed with “powerful emotion.”

Reverend Ralph Abernathy, presiding, said the boycott was not a one-man show, nor a preacher’s show, but the show of 45,000 black Montgomerians. It was also a show of black Americans all over America and all over the world and of freedom-loving people everywhere. When one ministerial spokesman after another told of the tremendous success of the one-day boycott, cries of joy and thunderous applause pealed forth and “ascended the heavens to God Almighty,” as one present was heard to say.

The leaders reiterated that the protest had been and would be kept Christian, non-violent, legal. Even Joe Azbell, city editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, seemed impressed, for in his article on Wednesday, December 7, he confessed that “there was discipline among Negroes which whites were not aware of.”

When the question was posed as to whether the people would end the one-day bus boycott, thousands of voices shouted the same word, “No! No!” One lone voice cried out in clear tones, “This is just the beginning!” Thunderous applause was the response.

Those on the podium agreed, without one dissenting vote, that the protest must continue. Ministers pledged themselves and their congregations to remain off the buses until legal steps were taken that would insure fair, unbiased, equal treatment of all bus passengers. Mr. E. D. Nixon received an ovation when he observed that “Negroes stopped riding the bus because they were arrested, and now they are being arrested for not riding them.”

As the Alabama Journal reported the next day, the Negroes passed a four-part resolution urging:

At these times, after almost two months had passed and with no end in sight, groups of widely-read pedestrians, picked up along the way and carried home, would get into deep conversations when their faith wavered in the balance. Indeed, one must wonder about the peculiar turns that things take sometimes, and about the controlling force that may compel them. Call it fate, destiny, a trick of nature, or the will of God, there is an inexplicable something, a force or power that seems to direct men’s lives and twist them into some particular shape. Sometimes that shape is good, sometimes not so good.

During such periods of intense suffering—and people did suffer, mentally, spiritually, and financially—there were those weary souls who began to question God’s presence, to wonder where God was and if God was really with the whites on segregation. Even the white man’s religion, some said, seemed to be based to a great extent on segregation and white supremacy. Then some mused, “Is God white?”

So they would reason as we drove along, going home from a hard day’s work. “Whites were born into, and have lived a lifetime enjoying the role of the superior, feasting their egos on the belief in racial supremacy. To these people, blacks are not equal.”

“Yes, those folks don’t believe in racial equality, and because of that belief, they think that black people can exist on less than the whites can.”

“Separate but equal is right, but it’s this separate but unequal that is killing us.”

“In the separate schools, libraries, recreational parks, types of employment, salaries, waiting rooms, drinking fountains—no matter what—there has not been equality.”

Many of these people had become disillusioned with life itself and wondered at the hypocrisy of it all. How could one set of human beings be so cruel and inhuman to another set, just because of the color of their skin and the texture of their hair? Was it because the side in control was superior? Or were whites afraid that, if the other side was given a chance, it would prove superior? Was the white man really afraid of the black man?

Most of the drivers who picked up pedestrians as they walked along, tired and hungry, would find a way to bring them out of such moods. We would tell a joke on “whitey” that showed him in a less exalted position than someone had just pictured him in, and everybody would laugh. In no time they would have forgotten the ugly mood they were in and begin all over again….

Almost four months had passed since December 5, 1955. Every plan the City Fathers had proposed to end the boycott had failed. Most of Montgomery’s buses stood dusty and empty where they had been parked at Christmas. The MIA had developed its own free transportation service. There was a general belief that the situation could and would go on indefinitely.

The MIA continued to receive funds from all parts of the U.S. and many places abroad. People from across the world still came to see and write about the situation.

Each Monday night thousands of people attended the weekly mass meetings. Collections were always taken, and every person who could contributed religiously and generously of her or his earnings to operate the transportation services. All of us who had steady jobs continued to give a percentage of our earnings each week, as we had since the beginning of the boycott. Drivers were paid regularly and were satisfied with their salaries. The station wagons had to be kept in good repair; fuel bills were enormous. The more money we needed, the more people, locally and elsewhere, seemed to give. The giving, the sharing, the serving continued on throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 1956. By April it was clear that the bus company and Montgomery’s City Fathers had realized that black Americans meant it when they said they would never return to the buses except on an integrated basis, for all other efforts to get city buses rolling again had failed. Then our case in the federal courts began to move forward.

On May 11, a three-judge federal court, sitting in the federal courthouse in downtown Montgomery, heard arguments in the MIA’s suit seeking a declaration that racially segregated seating on city buses violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal government treatment of all citizens, irrespective of race, as the Supreme Court already had ruled on with regard to schools in its 1954 landmark opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Several weeks later, on June 5, the judges announced that they had voted two to one against the constitutionality of segregated seating on Montgomery’s city buses. Relegating black riders to the rear of city buses, or forcing them to stand over empty seats reserved for whites, or making them surrender seats to white passengers, were all unconstitutional practices.

Judge Richard T. Rives wrote the 2-to-1 majority decision. U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson joined him in the majority opinion. Their opinion struck down as unconstitutional the statutes requiring racially segregated seating on city buses.

After their opinion, the two judges were deluged for months with hate mail, abusive telephone calls, and threats from segregationists for the stand they took and the opinion they gave that helped to wipe out segregation. Old friends no longer spoke to them. Black Montgomerians, however, will never forget either Rives or Johnson.

Montgomery city officials, though, did not celebrate or welcome Rives’ and Johnson’s ruling. Instead, they announced they would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Five months passed without any resolution of the matter. The city’s buses remained segregated, and the MIA’s transportation system continued to function most effectively. Then, in mid-November, just as the City Commission, under prodding from local segregationists, moved in state court to enjoin the operation of our carpool system, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a brief but decisive order, upholding Rives’ and Johnson’s ruling that Montgomery’s buses had to be integrated. We thought at first that the change would take effect immediately, but then learned, to our dismay, that the order would be effective only when formally served on Montgomery officials. The City Commission, however, seeking to postpone as long as possible the arrival of that order, petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling. The court rejected that request, but the legal maneuvering delayed matters for several weeks, and it was not until Thursday, December 20, that U.S. marshals formally served the Supreme Court order on city officials. That night the MIA held two mass meetings, and the next morning Montgomery City Lines resumed full service on all routes. Among its first passengers of the day were Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and Reverend Abernathy, who boarded an early morning bus and took seats in what had once been the reserved, whites-only section as news photographers snapped pictures of the historic event….

Sources: (1) Letter from Jo Ann Robinson to W.J. Gayle, May 21, 1954, reprinted by permission of the University of Tennessee Press. From The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Made It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, edited, with a foreword, by David J. Garrow (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). Copyright 1987 by the University of Tennessee Press; (2) interview with Rosa L. Parks My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered by Howell Raines (New York: Putnam’s, 1977). Copyright 1977 by Howell Raines. Used by permission of Putnam/Berkley, a division of Penguin/Putnam Inc.; and (3) excerpts from an account by Jo Ann Robinson, from David J. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Made It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Copyright 1987 by the University of Tennessee Press, pp. 43–47, 61–63, 112–13, 161–63.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Stewart Burns, ed., Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Burton Woods, Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1941–1965 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990).

David J. Garrow, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Made It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987).

———, ed., The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989).

Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harpers, 1958).

Brian Ward and Tony Badger, The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

Donnie Williams and Wayne Greenhaw, The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2006).

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Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY: