1 15. So our focus today then is going to be the montgomery bus boycott. Like i said. Thats what you read all of your sources for, except the payne article which gave you a larger focus. To do that. We are going to go back to our discussion of origin points, right . Our favorite slide which you are going to be so sick of, right, representing the narrative arc of the popular story of the Civil Rights Movement. And we are going back to our topic of origin points again with the objective of troubling it. One, putting those events in context, but also troubling the idea of them as arge points. Last week, we discussed brown versus board of education. We discussed the decision, response, the impact, but also the legacy. And i want to talk more about the legacy as we go forward. But we are to the going do that today. Then on tuesday, we spent time talking about the emmett till case, right . And the lynching of emmett till in august of 19 a 5. We used a mix of primary and secondary sources to consider how ideologies of race, gender, and justice impacted that case and impacted the lived experience of people in that case. I just wanted to take a moment to pull out and say this this week what happened this week that is of significance in relationship to the till case. Anybody paying attention . Yeah. Go ahead morgan. They passed the antilynching legislation. They passed the emmett till antilynching act. That designates lynching as a hate crime under federal law. And this legislation is coming 65 years after tills lichlging and 120 years after Congress First considered antilynching legislation. So thats 120 years of Congress Failing to, choosing not to, pass such legislation. In 2005, congress did see fit to apologize, apologized to the descendants of lynching victims, but it took another 15 years for both the senate and the house to pass this legislation. Then will it go to the white house for signing by president trump. So you can imagine that there are a lot of responses going on to this. And the prominent one is why now . And people are asking, is this commemorative . Is this a cause for celebration . Or is this a cause for concern . Is this preemptive . What is the cause now that is making this bill feasible within congress when it has been 120 years that it hasnt been the case. I just want to take a moment to point out ida b. Wells. Because a lot of people in talking about this antilynching legislation are asking, you know, what about wells . Ida b. Wells was a activist and a journalist in the late 19th century who publicly and doggedly and defendantly was condemning and publicizing lynching most notably through her publication a red record. She did this at great cost. Her printing effort was built down. She was run out of town. You can see why some would say certainly that till shouldnt be attached but where is the connection to ida b. Wells. We will talk about ida b. Wells in montgomery. Today we are focusing on the montgomery bus boycott. I want to put it in the time line that i showed you last time. We have the brown versus board of education decision in may of 1954. Then we have brown versus board of education two, the following year, in may of 19 5. Then the emmett till lynching in august of 1955. I dont think a lot of people realized how close to the till lynching that the montgomery bus boycott was. You have rosa parks being arrested on december 1st of 1955. That was a thursday. Then the following monday, on december 5th. The montgomery bus boycott begins. All right . So thats just a little bit of context for you. To put it in a visual form. And so we are going to use the readings today to consider to consider the bus boycott. And these readings give you a lot of information about events and circumstances leading up to but not so much information necessarily about the boycott. So we will also talk about that. And we can continue that conversation in our next in our next lecture as well and certainly if people have questions. I want to focus on montgomery because more than any of the other origin events that we talked about, montgomery is most often cited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement within the popular narrative. And that i find the popular narrative of the boycott itself within this larger narrative to be somewhat problematic. And i want to dig into that myth or that story of the montgomery bus boycott. In doing that, i think an effective way of doing that is looking to a central pig yourfi that myth, rosa parks. Right . I want to look at what i call the mythic rosa parks. I want to make a real distinction between rosa parks as a person, as a woman, and then rosa parks as an icon. Right . And we are going to be talking about both. But those are two separate things. So i i want to ask you if you can give me some of you may have a lot more information about rosa parks. We have a lot more Information Available to us right now. But if you can just give me a sense of the popular narrative, the enduring narrative or idea of rosa parks as you likely learned when you were in Elementary School. Or typically celebrated through black history month. I think what i learned about her in Elementary School was definitely she refused to give up her seat. She was like an ordinary woman coming from work and it was just like a manifestation of the common attitudes of the time and the common you know, shes just an ordinary woman. And like a martyr, honestly, like how it was portrayed. Yeah, she definitely became a martyr in that sense. Anyone else . I guess what i learned about it was that like she was the catalyst for this Like Movement that as if she was the only woman or person that had been arrested for not giving up their seat. As if like it was a single incident that happened, and it was her. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as much as the montgomery bus boycott is seen as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement she is seen as the beginning of the bus boycott. Thats where the tiling mother of the Civil Rights Movement comes from, right . An our best day, how many of us can hope for such a tiling. But, yeah, going off of both of those points shes typically she was typically described as this elderly woman. She was 42. I need that not to be elderly, all right . She was not elderly. She was described as an elderly stream stress, many of these accounts did not give her name. Elderly seamstress with tired feet, tired feet to single handedly took a seat and single handedly sparked the modern bla black sfl rights movement. This was the picture that my mother handed me. I held onto that well into my graduate studies. It was only when i started doing my own research as a masters student that that image started to crumble. Not just crumble, become frustrating to me. Right . Because i think that this ideal of parks really frustrates or negates her actual history, and particularly her activist history. Right . In recent years, we have had historians who are really working or really worked to break down kind of that idea the give us a more complicated picture. And i want to point to these two books in particular. Anybody read any of them . All right. This could be new for you. At the dark end of the street by daniel mcguire, and the rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks talent rebellious life of mrs. Rosa parks already tells you thats going to be a corrective narrative in that sense. These are great sources. I am drawing on them some with you today. All right. So i want to use this use these books or use the information that i have from books and my own research to kind of deconstruct that myth. And i am going to ask you if you know more about rosa parks or if what you are holding onto you can raise your hands. You dont have to answer. If what you are holding on to how many people are holding onto this typical iconic idea that gets celebrated in black history month. For how many of you is that the image that you are most familiar with . Wow. Okay. All right. Thats really thats really not surprising because i think that image circulates in museums, newspapers, definitely in Elementary School, Childrens Books and all of those. It is not surprising to me, but it is troubling to me. It is very troubling. What i want to point out is how how simple and inaccurate that representation is. I will start at the beginning. Beginning in the 1930s, rosa parks was campaigning on behalf of the scotts borrow boys with her husband. Melody brought up the scotts borrow boys in our last class in terms of the nine africanamerican men who were accused of raping two white women on a train. It was long drawn out case in which many of them spent years and years and years in prison. So rosa parks was actively campaigning on their behalf. Which is notable because also as melody brought out these are africanamerican who is were defended by the communist party. Right . Right there, thats a subversive kind of activity. Dont worry about righting this down. I will send it to you immediately after. Listen to the story. Just listen to the story. Technically if this is the first time you have had any encounter to this woman. I promise you. All right . All right . She sat as the lookout on the steps the her own home while they were meetings, naacp meetings held in her house where she discusses she had never seen so many guns on her kitchen table, never seen so many guns until those meetings were held in her house. She joined the naacp in 1943, either the second or the third woman in montgomery to do that. I should say the montgomery chapter of the naacp. And she became the secretary almost immediately because nobody else wanted to do it. Right . Is that in and of itself as a woman was unusual in montgomery at that time, less and less unusual, the one of the other women of the two or three was her mother. You could see there is some modelling going on there. This is key. In her role as the secretary of the naacp in the 1940s in montgomery, alabama, or in alabama, she traveled around the state by herself to gather evidence or proof or testimony from blacks who can witnessed or experienced white on black violence. Think about that, right . How many of you have seen rosa parks a picture of her . Shes not a formidable woman. Right . Shes a black woman traveling by herself through the jim crow south get material that many whites or Authority Figures would have been upset about. Right . This is a dangerous thing she is doing. Quite in contrast to the image we have of her. Beginning in the 1940s she organized on behalf of sexually assaulted abused black women very openly. Very openly. Thats what theohariss book is actually about. Both of them touch on that, but theoharis really talks about her or traces that history of parks advocating on behalf of sexually abused black women. Black women abused largely by white men, and largely under the awe auspices of white supremacy. She made repeated attempts to register to vote in the 1940s. Repeated events, as we will talk about, and im sure you know to some he can ten this too could be a very dangerous act at this point in time. She protested segregation on the buses before 1955. In fact, she was kicked off a bus by the same bus driver almost a decade earlier for resisting the activities of that bus driver or the instructions of that bus driver. She spoke. She was a featured speaking at the naacp state convention in 1948. I dont think thats an image that we generally have of rosa parks. In fact when i was doing my research a found an audio clip of her on a new york radio interview. And i remember hearing her voice for the first time and being like of course, shes southern. It just surprised me. It just surprised me, because i had never heard her. Like, i had never heard her. Right . But here she is speaking before a convention crowd in 1948. So very public. Very public. She trained at the Highlander Folk School in tennessee. This is before her arrest. She did a twoweek training in desegregation at the Highlander Folk School, which was tagged as communist. It wasnt a communist school. It was a leadership training institution. And it was it was precisely because of brown versus board of education that weiss workshops were being held. It was to help if tate that process. Hopefully peacefully. She never fully embraced nonviolence. She is on the record about that, on the record about not knowing if she could turn the other cheek. She certainly supported the nonviolent activities of the Civil Rights Movement but never fully embraced nonviolence. For how many you have, raise of hands, is that surprising . Right . Thats, again, troubling to me. Right . But not at all surprising. So my question then and i am going to allow for a couple of questions here or a couple of answers. Why do you think there is no right answer, right, because you are you are the ones who know. What do you think there is such an investment, or that that mythic parks as im calling her has taken has survived so long . Well after her death. She died in 2005. Why do you think that has such currency, that idea . I think like when i learned about this i think i was like in Elementary School, it is, 9, 10 years old. I think it is easier for her to be like a one dimensional character in the story that we tell children and you know when we are first learn being this history than it is for her to be like a complex human being that had like more to offer the story than just like sitting on a bus. Yeah. Yeah. Morgan. I think it is also like thinking about how a lot of us again learn about this in Elementary School, very strategic, on Public Education and educators role in general to tell children and push this narrative that black people get what they want if they are nonviolent and passified. There are so many historic world events that we learn about that are achieved by violent means, like revolutionary wise. And this vs she like a catalyst for has been remembered as a catalyst for the Larger Movement and we are being told this person was a nonvie help, peaceful, old, tired woman when that was not the case. I think thats very strategic. At least politically significant if not, you know, if not intended. Others . Anyone else want to speak to that . Yeah. Look at you all. I also think this narrative presents her as a political agent, which is something broader, like for women of all races, like thats something thats not mentioned like she is someone who was strategic in what she did and each in terms of like what organizations she associated with. I think it shows her agency in a way that we are reluctant to talk about when regarding women. Yeah, and remember i told you to draw mamie till bradley forward in terms of thinking about parks and the action she would take in the moment. Thats just months beforehand. Just months. We also have to have to think about how parks might have been presentingers had. We will talk more about that at a different time. I agree with all of you. The montgomery bus boycott is i think one of our greatest National Fairy tales. Right . It is a really nice story in its popular form of good versus evil, david and goliath, right, and that you know, good americans bear out. There is those ab rant racist southerners but good wins out. I think when there is the fairy tale, you have simple, good versus bad, and rosa park is the hero, along with Martin Luther king, they are the to of this fairy tale. It is always interesting to me. How many of you learned about rosa parks for if first time in Elementary School in okay. How many of you learned anything else about her after . Okay. It is always interesting to me because i think you are right maybe in the sense that people think that children need simple characters, right . And to me, the sad thing is, thats when i think, you know, minds, attitudes, are very flexible and can take in complex information. You know, i often use the example of when i was in graduate school this Childrens Book came out about Martin Luther king. And my professor brought it in. And he read it to us. And it said on april 4th, 1968, Martin Luther king died. Which is not inaccurate. Right . But he was assassinated. Right . And thats showing a hesitancy to deal in that material. Then i point people to grimms fairy tales and everything which are horrifying and scary, right . But there is this idea that we need these sanitized stories i think for children. I think that would be fine. But that would be okay if there was then any other point where you were actually learning, you know, building on that story. And my experience is i am sure this is different in different region asks different schools and that. But my experience has been that most people dont then have more information on Civil Rights Movement and or rosa parks. Yes. Sorry eva. I learned about rosa parks when i was young, preschool and then again in Elementary School. Then in middle school or high school i learned how she was not the first person to to the give up other seattle. I think that was interesting and one of the articles quoted a parks had the car better of character we needed to get the city to rally behind uls. I thought that was an interesting for me that was the moment i was curious why rosa parks if this happened before rosa parks, custom the article laid out. I thought it was interesting that we specifically focus on her and dont talk about the back story behind her when we are talking about her. Lets go through that. One of the reasons that i focus on the symbolic mythic a parks or start there is because i think shes propping up this bigger myth of the montgomery myth. And then i would argue that that is also obscuring information about the Montgomery Movement and the montgomery bus boycott that would be really helpful to us now. Information about organizing, information about how they funded things, information about what formed their theories or their strategies. Right . So i want to speak to that. Because thats a huge question. Why . Why do we not have that other information. The montgomery myth. Here are some aspects of it. Dont worry about writing it down. I will send it to you. Rosa park is an accidental activist. Had enough, tired, going home, i am not taking it anymore. That she is the first one who took that stand, that the boycott is unprecedented, right, and that the boycott is respond containous. Thats part of what allows us to have that tiner idea of the Civil Rights Movement. Suddenly there was organizing on this issue of civil rights. Martin luther king jr. , it should say, organized the boycott. The masses followed king. The masses walked, which they did. Boycott ended segregated buses and that the boycott was short. I want to tick through those and speak to those. The first one being this idea that parks was the first, that she was the first woman, black woman, to resist reg grated Public Transportation. Thats not even true. I mean, there are examples from the previous century, one of them being ida b. Wells who protested on the railroad and won. She sued and won. Sojourner truth protested on d. C. Street cars. And homer plessys black man. Thats where plessy versus ferguson, separate what equal comes in. We have examples of papers boycotting seg bratted Public Transportation before and in other locations. Birmingham, alabama we have two examples. One here. Pauly corp. In 1943. She was a teenager. A bus driver treated her poorly. She spit on him. She cursed him. And then she spent 30 days in jail. As a teenager. There is an incident of another woman who is nameless in the record who got into a shoving match with a white man on the bus. She cursed him while she was riding on the bus. When she got off the bus she was arrested and sentenced spent time in jail. In montgomery to the points that several of you have made there is several, you know, documented incidences of women doing exactly what parks did. And some them did it more than once. First one here being he issy worthy. In 1943 she argued with the driver, got off the bus, the driver followed her, spit on her, beat her, and according to eyewitness testimony, she gave as much as she got. I dont know what happened to her. But im thinking she probably spent time in jail. Reeta brinson in 1953 sat in front of a white couple on the bus. She was targeted by the bus driver but avoided a jail sentence because the white people agreed to move. Segregated buses, generally speaking they are ten seats in the front, ten seats in the black. Or 16 and 16, whites, blacks, and then this nomansland. But depending on who was on the bus the white seats went to the white patrons and black people had to move whenever they were instructed to. And what is important to understand here. Bus drivers had police powers. Police powers. That makes resisting doubly risky. Right . They could do what a Police Officer could do in those circumstances, including, you know, violence. Two other example, rosa parks, she resisted a decade before she resisted. And viola right refused to give up her seat. She was beaten, arrested and jailed. She was found guilty. She repealed the case. As reprisal, white Police Officers kidnapped her 16yearold daughter and raped her in a cemetery. Right . That was for her resisting. Resisting. It tells you the significance of crossing that line, of crossing that line. Then we also have, as the garl article pointed out n the same year, in 1955, we have claw death coleman a 15 yoorltine teenager who refuses to give up her seat on the bus. The naacp and everyone rallies around her in march of 1955 until she winds up pregnant. And then they back off. In april of that year, a month later, ariela prouder has an incident on a bus where shes arrested for resisting to give up her seat. Remember that name. And then in october, Mary Louise Smith who is an 18yearold africanamerican girl who refuses to give up her seat also before rosa parks, we dont know about her because her father came down and paid her fine and she was out before the naacp or anything ever knew about it. But both claudette and mary louise said thing to the effect of we werent in the inner circle. We were too dark. We were too poor. The smith family were catholics which also put them outside the bounds of the circle in that sense. So we have three at least three women who have done the same thing in the same year as rosa parks. Right . So we need to think about we need to scratch off that rosa parks was the first. Right . Lets just take that off. Yes. When you say that they are too dark, too poor, are you saying they couldnt be the figure behind the boycott or behind the movement. Right. Thats what cole vin and and lieu east coleman and luisy smith believed. There is evidence that supports that. Parks and e. D. Swain are both on the record saying we cant use her. I think if rosa parks was wearing a black panther uniform and a beret that would be a different story. I think skin complexion has something to do with it. She doesnt look like possibly the traditional. But i dont think she was seep as much of a threat, just super innocent in that case. So yeah. I mean there is definitely evidence. Again, parks says this herself. Right . When she is arrested e. D. Nixon like hallelujah, this is the one, shes the one and they all gather at her house to convince her of that. Who is against it . Her husband. Hes not an idiot. He knows how dangerous that is. Yeah. Do you think that robinson and nixon kind of forged that narrative or made her the figure of the Civil Rights Movement thats been propagated since then . Thats a good question. I dont think robinson did. I think parks and nixon did. Robinson was angry, really i think a agree when she backed off of coal vin. Coal vin was a student parks had worked with because parks was in charge of the naacp youth activity. They had a relationship in that sense. When she backed off of coal vin she was really upset. As the garl article tells you, they are waiting. Robinson has been fighting this fight for a decade. When the brown decision comes out and she writes four days later she writes to the mayor, like, you know, just reminding you, africanamericans make up 75 of the rioters. And we were to actually boycott, that would be really bad for the bus company. Right . I mean, thats a threat, right, to the degree to which she can do it. I dont think we can tag it on robinson so much. But i think we can tag it on gender politics at the tomb, and certainly also plets of color. Because it is not incidental that shes a lineskinned woman and shes chosen. All of these thing allow for the idea of middle class respectable. All allow for the idea of the middle class respectability. Despite she is absolutely of the working class, arguably the working poor. She doesnt have that veneer. Right . She is part of it. She doesnt have a demeanor that is radical. She has a radical activist past but doesnt have a demeanor thats radical. There is image politics going on here. We can decide whether or not we default them for that or they have looked at the reality of their situation and we have talked about the trap of getting into a image politics game. Right . One of the thing we could consider are what are the effects of rosa parks having been the symbol . I think that goes back to Morgans Point of who is worthy of justice . We talked about that with mamie till bradley as well. Another thing that i want you to just keep in mind is that, you know, the question often comes up, why women . Why was it primarily women . And it was primarily women who were doing this. You a you need to know is emmett till. There was a history. To do the same type of resistance you are seeing women being beaten. To do it as the same type of resistance as an africanamerican man was even riskier. Also, they were riding the buses as much. If there was a car in the family the man would be taking it to his job. It was women on the bus primarily. Also because they were domestics, right . So they were on the bus in a greater capacity, and often with white people. So those lines were kind of blurred because they might go do the Grocery Shopping with the children of their white employer. And in that capacity, they sat up front. Right . They stat up front because that white baby wasnt going in the back. Right . So there is a little bit more blurring of the line there. And there are stories africanamerican men men if a scuffle started on the bus with an africanamerican woman they got up and went out the back door. They suffered psychologically and they were criticized for that. They got up and walked out the back door. Because they understood how loaded that situation was. I also wanted to go to the next idea of this movement being unprecedented and spontaneous and try to trouble that or just refute it. There is examples within alabama that refute that idea. There is a boycott in 1900 of the trolleys, there are not buses at this point in time of the trolleys that last about two years. It is not as total as the montgomery bus boycott is. The montgomery bus boycott is 95 successful among africanamericans. And you know robinson is right. If 75 of your clientele is africanamerican and then 95 of them stay off the buses. I mean, this crippled the bus company. They had to keep raising fares, they were very much on brink of financial ruin and yet time after time after time again they refused to segregate the buses. Thats important, you know, to think about, to understand. So montgomery blacks held a boycott of the buss in 1941 around an Easter Holiday event that happened. And they said they were often like bussed out but then dropped far away and had to walk in the rain and everything. They boycotted the buses. That was just a very short event. Then in baton rouge in 1953 there was a bus boycott that people in montgomery very much took information from, right . So thats when i say if you have a bus boycott narrative thats as simple as the one that we have you cant do what people in montgomery did in terms of the baton rouge boycott, where they took information and they learned from that to organize their own boycott. And then this idea of it being spontaneous. Right . I think garl successfully right deconstructs that idea. If you look at when the garl article was written, in 1985 so when you when i asked you, how many of you have a more complex idea about rosa parks and or the montgomery bus boycott and you are telling me in the year 2020 that it is still coming down this way thats troubling because we have had this information now for a long time. You know, people, educators, we have had this information for a long time. Right . And womens Political Council just blows that out of the water, that idea that it was spontaneous, that they decided at the last moment. We know from garl that there was a plan in place, right, at least a loose plan, and that robinson was just waiting and that there had been many, many meetings between the wpc and city authorities to address this segregated seating with all of these heavy measures. You know, like, let us come in the front door, you know, at least. Like, have more black bus drivers. It doesnt necessarily have to be that it is an integrated bus at this point in time. But it is no, no, no to all of those thing. The question i have is why didnt we know anything about the womens Political Council until 1985 . And then why dont you know anything about her. Right . Why do you think we dont know anything about her or anything about the womens Political Council thus far . Whats that, do the math. 35 years later. What do you think accounts for that . Kathryn . I think like part of it the image of Martin Luther king jr. As like the leader and the figurehead in all of this. That if you are kind of in a sense the montgomery bus boycott is the origin point for him. Yes. So then you know if the story is not like he was the one leading this, he was the one pushing this forward, then that kind of makes things difficult for his narrative. Right. Very much. And thats in keeping with what was said before about rosa parks and that simple idea. Did i see another hand there . Okay. Absolutely. Right . And then the other thing that we have to understand is that africanamericans on the ground are forging some of these ideas, right, because, et cetera politically expedient and safer to do so. And thats important to consider when you are thinking about a marginalized group or a marginalized group or oppressed group trying to impress their politics. Robinson is an activist, but shes still a middle class black woman in the south. I am not just saying that because she was limited. She also has some gender ideaologist about how she should behave as a middle class black woman in the south. A lot of africanamerican women were putting the black men in front. There were other practical reasons why they could do that. One, they think thats the image that should be out there. Makes the africanamerican man looks stronger. Doesnt emasculate them in a way. And robinson has a job. She has a job at a university. Right . We learn i love this. This is what i remember learning about robinson, and her distributing this leaflet in the middle of the night, getting her students to go to her university and memo graphing this leaflet once a parks was arrest saying, you know, this happened to another person, we cant let this happen anymore, boycott the buses on monday. And she blankets the black sections of town with this to the point where black ministers in church on sunday are saying what is happening . Where is this coming and the news, the mont advertiser reports on it that sunday afternoon like where does this come from . She did it all in the middle of the night. She gets in trouble because she used University Property to do it. Right . But the the doityourself kind of nature of this, the hasty nature of this. She says she already had it written to a large curry and it was just waiting to be himio graphed. But there was a reason she did it behind the scenes, right . And that at the time you know when the Montgomery Advertiser is like, who is responsible for this, the wpc wasnt like, hey, it is us, right . And in fact that friday, thursday night they distribute these leaflets, that friday all the africanamerican male ministers get together and black leaders get together to talk about what to do. And that becomes more the site of the organizing or the thrust behind that. So then there is this idea which is connected of Martin Luther king organizing the boycott, and that everybody was following his order. And that is partially because he was among that group of black male leaders. Its also because he was elected as the president on monday afternoon, the day that the boycott starts. He is elected as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association which was the organization that was the official representative of the boycott. Why do you think hes elected . Does anybody know anything about king at this point in time . Hes 26 years old. Hes just moved to montgomery. Yeah. I mean, like as a minister, he kind of provides or like a reverend he provides like a level of respectability to the movement. Definitely. Definitely. Everybody agrees. He has a ph. D. 26, a ph. D. In theology, he is articulate. There is a coded word. Hes articulate. He presents well. Definitely. But hes also new. He kind of gets pushed out front because he doesnt have any of the relationships, the patronage relationships that some of the other black male leaders do. So hes not loyal to anyone yet. And if he messes up, well, they dont lose something. Right . So i am not saying that he wasnt willing to do this or volunteered. But now think about i cant remember who said it. This is also the origin point for Martin Luther king, right . Was that you catastrophe rkathr . Right. 26 years old. No way did he know what this was going to mean for him, how he was going to be launched onto the national stage, partly because nobody thought this boycott was going to last more than a day. The reason why it was that monday is because thats when rosa parks was going to our trial. Nobody thought this boycott was going to last more than a day. The other reason people thought Martin Luther king was leader is because the mass meetings like the one you read about in the newspaper that you had, he is up front. And his audience is the masses, right . So it is easy for outside media, which did come and film this, film it, report on it, to see him as the leader. In fact, at this first mass meeting, thats what this is a picture of, rosa parks, they present her, and Martin Luther king says, you know, this person we are so lucky she is the face of our movement, the person who is not a disturbing factor in the commune. Which is, shes totally a disturbing factor in the community. And she says, should i Say Something . And the minister says you have done enough. Have a seat. You have done enough. I find that moment interesting. Because she does. She sits down. And i i just wonder what the dynamics were there, if she sits down because she, you know, takes the gift of like you dont have to do anymore, you have done enough let us let us just recognize you, or if it is like, no no, we got this, we got this. Right . But she sits down. Right . So it is very easy then, you see the mantle shift from parks to king that night. And you also see this as the official debut of the parks we know, this not disturbing middle class respectable woman. From that point forward, the Media Campaign begins. And i told that you the till trial was one of the first media dramas of the Civil Rights Movement as we think about it. The montgomery bus boycott was a sustained media event in many ways, a sustained, staged drama. All right . Staged drama. So part of the reason that people see him as the leader is because hes standing out front all of the time. But throughout the boycott, he and the women who have been arrested before and he are saying, its not me. Im not the leader. Like, im like a spokesperson, but the masses are leading this movement. And clawudette coal vin says at the item, the leaders are just we ourselves. She is still a teenager at this point in time. Again, king is not refuting that. He considers himself lucky to be representing them. But because of the jenner the politics, but because of the media image and how it is being what positioned, there is this idea that hes the leader. But it is interesting to know that on monday, that monday, december 5th, everybody gathers at this mass meeting to assess how its gone. The Montgomery Improvement Association has been formed, that afternoon. And the idea is that it is, you know, a boycott, very successful, they showed their strength and all of the people in the audience were like we are to the going backan those buses, especially the maids and the cooks. We are not going back on those buses. We are not suffering that humiliation anymore. So this is no longer it is a show force in a sense. The masses decide that night, you we are going to continue this. We are going to continue this. Then it becomes a heart of how we need to figure out how to run a bus boycott, right, how you have to run that. Because, right, it says here masses walked. I put that as an aspect of the montgomery myth. Absolutely africanamericans were walking during the bus boycott. During all sorts of weather, for miles and miles. There is testimony of people talking about how they have to walk miles in to work, miles out of work in that sense. I told you, 95 effective. You see pictures of buss with like one white lady. A really iconic photograph with one white lady sitting there looking out and otherwise the buss are of the in. And there is reports of earn if as threatening other africanamericans if they get on the bus. Right . So they are absolutely walking. But it is not reasonable to think that if they had to walk everywhere, to their jobs and anywhere else they wanted to go that it would have been as successful as it would have been. That would have been a burden that would have been really difficult. Looking to the baton rouge example, they form a car pool, a very intricate car pool thats organized and run by the Montgomery Improvement Association. And many of the drivers are middle class black women who are either housewives of elite black men or teachers at the universities. They are driving people around. They also have all the black taxis start to do free rides or reduced fare rides until the city makes that an illegal activity. Right . So there is this really organized car pool that is happening. At the center of it they need funding. They need to put gas in these cars. And there is recently, actually, this woman Georgia Gilmore has been recognized. She was a cook, an activist in montgomery and she formed the nowhere club. It was the family was count of a joke because when people would say wear she sold sandwiches. She got all the women together and put the fuel in the cars. People could ask, where did you get the sandwiches . Nowhere. Nowhere. A hidden transcript. She is getting credit for all of that. But they have a infrastructure behind the boycott, most of which is manned by women. Including rosa parks who is fired immediately after she takes her stand on the bus. She is fired. She and her husband her husband is fired. She becomes one of the people organizing this boycott throughout the spring of 1956. So it is primarily women who are running these activities. None of this is visible, though, if you just have the saintly rosa parks and then suddenly the powers that be realize oh, this is really wrong, and they desegregated the buses, right in there is a lot of work that went in. There is a book called day break of freedom by stewart burns. There is no narratives. He compiles all the documents that went on during the boycott, events planned, things they need, how theyre going to fund king going to different places to talk and things, so theres a big, big machine behind the boycott. This is a huge one. The idea that the boycott, the montgomery bus boycott desegregated the buses. How many of you think thats true . Or have thought thats true . Youre like, this is a trick question. Youre like, how many of you think thats true . I wont say that its not true. This is a debatable question. But it did not officially end segregation on Public Transportation. Any guesses as to what would or did . Melody . It lasted for like 382 days, i think, actually. So i think if you look at it as a monetary perspective, how much money they were losing and if they could sustain that, i think it was more so a monetary decision, possibly. I think that is a very logical and reasonable guess. Its wrong. Because it should be. Like, of course, theyre crip e crippling the bus company, right . And theyre making it very difficult for, they have to keep reducing bus routes and everything. And the fact that that is not the answer, again, tells you how entrenched the city officials were. Right . Yeah. The Civil Rights Act in 1964, and like finally no. Yes, but it was legislation. It was legislation. The browder v. Gayle. The browder v. Gayle court case. This is a huge injustice. You have five plaintiffs. Eventually, Jeanetta Reese drops out because shes harassed. You have five plaintiffs who bring this case against the mayor and the city and the bus company. Looking at that list of plaintiffs, notice any absences . Whos not there . Rosa parks isnt anywhere there. And she cant be. She can no longer be a test case because during her trial in the fifth, they changed what she had been charged with. She was charged for violating the City Ordinance in not giving up her seat. The City Ordinance said that says that if there were seats available, africanamericans could sit on them. The state ordinance said africanamericans had to obey whatever the bus said. So it was amended in the middle of the trial, and then her lawyer went to appeal it because it was under appeal, she couldnt be the test case. So shes not involved in this case. Any other absences you might notice here . Theres no men. And theres an appeal for men. Theres an appeal for men. Ande edie nixon says at a meeting, seriously, guys. You have been riding the Apron Strings of these cooks and maids forever. Like, none of you came . No one . Youre not going to put your name to this . Which is interesting because the black male ministers, largely the leadership, were less vulnerable because their patronage were black people. They didnt have a business. They werent working at a university funded by white people. But so its all women. Its all women who have experienced arrest or harassment on the buses. Including claudette colvin, Mary Louise Smith. These people who were considered not eligible, not the right fit for being the face of the movement. And they werent, because none of you knew about them. Right . You dont even know about this case. So they werent the face of it. But this case goes forward. It starts in february. It starts february 1st in 1956. Goes forward. This is where you get all the testimony about women being these Court Documents are so useful because you have testimony from all these women about what happened to them. And that brings in all these other records about their arrests, right . And you have them saying in a public court against the mayor and the city of montgomery, this happened to me. Thats why im here. And they keep asking, this is where claudette says the leaders are just we ourselves, because they keep trying to find out, you know, about king. About king, like theyre pawns for king in a sense. The leaders are just we ourselves. So starts in february. In june, 1956, you have a ruling. The lower court rules 21 in favor of the plaintiffs. On the grounds of that 14th amendment. Right . City officials appeal. Theyre not giving up. The city officials appeal. November 13, the Supreme Court upholds that lower court ruling. City officials appeal. And this is part of what accounts for the fact theres 381 days. Africanamericans are like, were not going back on those segregated buses. December 20th, the Supreme Court, they didnt hear the case again. They said we wont consider the appeal. We have decided this. Right . So that effectively ends the citys quest or attempt to stave off this desegregation of their city buses. The decree of that ruling reaches montgomery on december 20th, 1956. Africanamericans meet in their final mass meeting of the boycott and agree, okay, we got what we wanted. Well go on the buses tomorrow, december 21st, 1956. And in the morning, that morning, you know, cameras come from all over the country, and they go to Martin Luther kings house. You know, and watch him and ralph abernathy, another prominent minister, walk to the nearest bus station, 5 00 in the morning, get on a bus, and they take all these photographs that are very iconic now. At some point in the morning, someone says what about that parks woman . Maybe we should get a photograph of her. So they do go and find her. But shes an afterthought. Even as shes become the face of the movement, because shes not the leader of the movement, she was the one who was relatively taken care of, and again, this is because during the entire year, every time she appears in a public setting in relationship to the boycott, shes with men. Right . Very much the same way mamie till bradley was. Edie nixon is standing next to her, her lawyer is next to her. Shes surrounded by men in suit and ties. And so she does speak after certain events and stuff, but shes right next to these authoritative looking africanamerican men, throughout the entire thing. So they do become seemingly the strength of that movement. So i think that its really an injustice that no one knows about these women. Aryella broader had six children, she was a seamstress. She was a wife and mother. A midwife. She went back to get her bachelors degree in her 30s, then she got her masters degree. She was an activist. They didnt pick her the first time because they didnt think she could withstand a crossexamination. I dont know why, but thats why they didnt use her as a test case, and then she becomes the lead of the case, and nobody knows about her. Nobody knows about her. Then, to that end, what melody brought up is this idea that the boycott was short. Just out of curiosity, because you have all admitted, not all of you, but most of you admitted i had a skewed idea of this. How long do you think most people, if not yourself, thought the boycott was . Or how long do you think most people think boycott, now how long do you think it is . You can just yell out a number. A couple months. A few weeks. Thats definitely what i grew up thinking. Yeah, yeah. And i think what allows for that is kind of that fairy tale idea, right . Because again, something so wrong wouldnt take that long. So with the browder v. Gayle case, though, my question is did the boycott desegregate the buses . You dont have enough information to make a, this is where im planting my flag, but without the boycott, what do you think . Because it is not browder v. Gayle is what put the nail in the coffin of plessy v. Ferguson. This is a huge ruling. A huge ruling. You know, arguably more important or as important as brown, right . As brown v. Board of education. Huge ruling. Do you think that the boycott was necessary to that ruling . I think it was because i think the boycott, while it wasnt an illegal action or might not have produced, you know, like might not have taken down separate v. Equal, i thing it changed peoples perceptions of what was happening with separate v. Equal, and a Media Campaign, it reverberated throughout the country. So i think you change peoples hearts and you change peoples minds. And i mean, maybe that is playing into the myth, but you definitely had alliship grow probably in the north, which is probably what people down boycotting needed. Yeah. Kind of to that extent, you talked about how there were, like, previously cases that had been lost in courts about, like, buses. And desegregating them. I think the boycott was necessary to again help with the media push. To finalize, like you said, the nail in the coffin. Okay, anyone else . Okay. Yeah, i mean, i think thats a very strong argument. Because the Supreme Court or Court Officials arent operating in a vacuum. Right . So to understand that Public Opinion may be moving in a different direction, and theres also maybe the legal grounds, right . But to understand that Public Opinion may be moving in a different direction, which is demonstrated by a northern response, right, thats too simple, but by a northern response, because this is when the Movement Goes national. This is when the Movement Goes national. People are sending in money from all over the world. The Movement Goes international, actually. Theres political cartoons that you can find in french newspapers talking about the boycott and everything. So the Movement Goes national and international in that sense, so if we think again about dudziak and put that in a cold war context, too, thats part of the reason people outside the United States are interested anyway, and it inspires a similar boycott in south africa. So people are paying attention to this in a way that movements hadnt been they hadnt coalesced or gotten that attention before. Why do you think this one got so much attention . Because its not that africanamericans in a city hadnt organized around some action. Not even that it hadnt happened in montgomery before. Why did this become a National Media event . The answer is implied in question. Yeah. Because they had the media. Right, to some degree. You cant take out the fact that we have this idea of a movement coming in the postwar moment without considering what those circumstances were. Wasnt just a cold war thing. Right . Thats something to consider. We have new technologies. And this is the first example of a movement thats considered nonviolent direct action. Its not the first time that strategy was used. But this is when that becomes publicized. The leaders, Martin Luther king, are talking about nonviolent direct action. And were going to talk about nonviolence more in terms of a strategy, in relationship to other strategies that come later in a sense. But its i need to be careful when i say this because i do not want to dismiss the idea that the people participating in the boycott were dedicated to a doctrine of nonviolence for moral, civil, principled reasons. But its also pageantry. Right . Its also pageantry. And when you have media cameras and you have journalists coming down, and you see just this, you know, crowds and crowds, row after row after row of well dressed africanamericans stoically, peacefully walking through the city, walking up to the court building, thats an image of blackness that hasnt been mainstream before that point in time, right . And activists, subsequent activists take note. Were going to talk about that when we talk about little rock and birmingham. They take note. So this nonviolent direct action, whereas certainly this is a strategy that had been used in other moments, other movements, becomes something that people understand as defining the movement. That comes out of montgomery in that sense. So it has this National Presence that also, to your point, morgan, its not scary. I mean, to the virulent segregationists, it is scary, but its not scary because theres no angry black people. Theres no weapons. Right . Nobody is demanding, theyre totally demanding, right . Nobody is demanding, theyre just peacefully refusing. Theyre peacefully refusing. And theyre litigated against many times during that year for doing that. The boycott is considered illegal. They take trump whoa. They take king and they put him into they charge him on conspiracy, on conspiracy grounds. And they bring all of these other people who are considered to be, including robinson and parks, how many of you have seen the picture of parks like a mugshot of parks, rosa parks . Thats not from when she was arrested. Thats from when she had to participate in this conspiracy trial. And everybody at that trial is saying, you know, king is not leading this boycott. Like again, this is just we ourselves. You have all these africanamerican people in montgomery show up at the courthouse. They find out king has been arrested, and they say, wheres my warrant . This has never happened before where africanamerican people arent afraid to go to the jail. They get in their best clothes. They drive to the jail. All sorts of more working class people line the courthouse steps to make sure they go in and they go out. They turn themselves in. Thats a shift in the relationship of africanamericans towards law enforcement. You dont take yourself to a jail as an africanamerican in the jim crow south. They show up, and it totally takes away some of the leverage the city authorities have in that sense. Throughout the boycott, they charge, someone bombs kings house. They put an injunction against the free taxis. They do all these things trying to cut the legs out from under the boycotters, but unsuccessfully. But i think all that pageantry is what allows for the idea that we have of the montgomery bus boycott as being short, as being an action of martyrs and saints. You know, with Martin Luther king marching the masses to freedom and the wall comes tumbling down in that sense, and it starts this freedom movement. And so you can see why i kind of find that problematic because this isnt a useful history. At least in my mind. Its not a useful history. Its inspiring, and many people find it compelling and inspiring. And thats important. Thats important. You dont want to rip down an origin story, right . Or a myth without putting Something Else there. And i think that if you have an idea about whos organizing, how the organizing, how they were successful in this, they were successful. This is one of the more successful social movements in history. At least in u. S. History, and at least in the 20th century. They were successful. If you dont know anything about it, and if king and parks appear to be these figures, like again, who on your best day can be as saintly as as courageous as king and parks, as these things make them appear . And they certainly were courageous, right, but they were people with complex things and pasts in that sense. And put in these situations for a myriad of reasons. A myriad of reasons. And then you start to think oh, that is possible. Lets look at what they do. You cant take their strategies and map them into a 21st century, right . But we can take their strategies and adjust for our historical circumstances. Thats a useful history. This isnt a useful history as far as im concerned. And so if we put this here, if i give you this back, this timeline, i just want you to have a sense of the bus boycott timeline. Ill send it to you, dont worry about it right now. Oops. Going backwards. I also want to point out parks role. So you have parks at highlander before she ever got on the bus, before she ever made her stand. And this is important because people always say she was either a plant or she didnt mean to, it was just she was inspired by her tired feet. She doesnt have to be an naacp plant. She was entirely inclined to do what she did on the bus that day. It didnt have to be preplanned. She was entirely inclined because of her activist self to do that. Right . And then you have the Supreme Court ruling that ends the bus ends the bus boycott. And i want to point out all of these other women, just make sure, but ill end here. You have the symbolic mythic rosa parks propping up this montgomery myth. And then the other thing that were going to continue through the rest of next time and through several other classes, i would argue that that is at the center of this more problematic popular narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. Yeah, lauren. I think going back to the original question of why this isnt taught in schools or anything, one point that cant be overlooked is that not talking about the organization, not talking about the court case is just showing how when were saying its inspirational, its like when youre talking to these young black kids in these schoolsur s i think the whole p of the Education System is to push forth a specific agenda. When you dont bring forward the specifics, the young black kids in the class are missing the point of if we organize, if we find solidarity amongst each other were kind of able to progress properly, but instead the rhetoric and the agenda thats being pushed is if youre peaceful and quiet about it, that will happen, but we have seen thats definitely not the way it happens. I think another reason why its not ever spoken about is because if they do speak about it in its truest form, it might almost ignite a different feeling in these Young Children to kind of make some difference and to align with each other. Im sure that the case in many cases. Ill also say that, i mean, i didnt have time to tell you anything about the brown case. We talked about the decision, right . You dont know anything about the nine children involved in the brown case. Nine children. You dont know anything about them. Thats not sexy. The decision was sexy. The boycott was sexy in that sense. The details, its part of the reason you should really question whether or not theres a movement now. Right . Because were not seeing sexy, were not seeing really pageantry stuff, maybe, that doesnt mean theres not organizing going on. The payne article, part of the reason i gave that to you is he said men led but women organized. You may have to consider your ideas of what leadership is and organizing is, right . Because i think the wpc kind of troubles his thesis there, at least for me. But only if you allow yourself to consider what do they mean by leadership . What do they mean by organizing . I was going to say while i was reading the emmett till and the bus boycott readings the past two classes, like, i drew a lot of comparison just in my own observation to mothers of the movement and how like theyre a huge part of black lives matter, and i dont think they get enough credit or, like, as leaders in the movement as they should. And like they definitely relate to, like, mamie till bradley and also in this situation like the women were the ones that built this whole infrastructure that allowed them to boycott. So like, just kind of drawing comparisons i guess to today, i really was thinking about those mothers. And well talk more about this. Ill let you go. Well talk more about this. The need for people on the ground in the mid20th century to keep their activities secret and the consequences of that, but i told you earlier about this book all black lives matter by barbara ransby. That gets into all of the details. It really tells you whats going on right now or has been going on over the last couple years, and its the first time reading something that i had some optimism. Oh, im not seeing it. Right, im not seeing it. Because people have adopted different ideas about how to approach this. Im not seeing it as publicly or in the media to such a degree. Doesnt mean its not happening. Doesnt mean its not actually resulting in some victories. Right . All right, i have to let you go. Ill see you guys next time. Every saturday night, American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. 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On lectures in history, George Mason University professor sam lebovic teaches a class about politics and economics of the early cold war period. He argues with extreme ideologies such as fascism and