test. test. test. test. test. test. captioning performed by vitac of the civil rights movement that's been propagated since then? >> that's a good question. i don't think robinson did. i think nixon did. robinson was angry when they backed off of colvin. colvin was a young girl that parks had worked with. they had a relationship in that sense. so when they backed off of covin, she was really upset. as the article tells you, they're waiting. robinson has been fighting this fight for a decade, right? and when the decision -- the brown decision comes out and she writes, what, four days later, she writes to the mayor like, you know, just reminding you, african-americans make up 75% of the rioters. if we were to actually boycott, that would be really bad for the bus company, right? that's a threat, right, to the degree to which she could do it. i don't think we can tag that on robinson so much. but i think we can tag it on gender politics of the time and politics of color. because it's not incidental that she's a light-skin woman. all of these things allow for middle class respectability. they allow for middle class respectability, despite the fact that rosa parks is absolutely of the working class and arguably of the working poor. she doesn't have that veneer, right? that's -- and she -- she does not have a demeanor that is radical. she has a radical activist past, but she doesn't have a demeanor that is radical. there's definitely image politics going on here and we can decide whether or not we fault them for that or they're looking at the reality of their situation and we've talked in here about the trap of getting into an image politics game, right? and so one of the things we could consider is, what are the effects of rosa parks having been the symbol? i think that goes back to morgan's point of who is worthy of justice? we talked about that with bradley as well. another thing that i want you to just keep in mind is that the question often comes up, why women? why was it primarily women? and it was primarily women who were doing this. and all you need to know is, emmett till. there's a bigger history to that. you're seeing these women get beaten. to do the same type of resistance as an african-american man would have been even riskier. also african-american men weren't riding the buses as much. it was women who were on the bus primarily. also because they were domestics, right? they were on the bus in a greater -- a greater capacity and often with white people. those winds were kind of blurred. they might go do the grocery stopping with the children of their white employer. in that capacity, they sat up front, right? they sat up front because that white baby wasn't going in the back, right? there's a little bit more blurring of the line there. and there's stories of african-american men often if a scuffle would start on a bus with an african-american woman, they would get up and go out the back door and suffered for that and were criticized for it. but they get up and go out the back door because that's -- they understood how loaded that situation was. so i also want to go to the next idea of this movement being unprecedented and spontaneous. and i want to try and trouble that -- or just, what, refute it. there's examples within alabama that refute that idea. there's a boycott in 1900 of the trolleys that last about two years. it's not as total as the montgomery bus boycott is. the montgomery bus boycott is 95% successful among african-americans and robinson is right. if 75% of your clientele is african-american, this crippled the bus company. they had to keep raising fares. and yet time after time, they refused to segregate the buses. that's important to think about, to understand. so montgomery blacks held a boycott in 1941 and they said they were bussed out and dropped far away and had to walk in the rain and everything. they boycotted the buses. that was a very short event. and then in baton rouge in 1953, there was a bus boycott that people in montgomery very much took information from. if you have a bus boycott narrative that's as simple as the one that we have, you can't do what people in montgomery did in terms of the baton rouge boycott where they took information and learned from that to organize their own boycott. and then this idea of it being spontaneous, right? if you look at when the article was written in 1985, so when you -- when i ask you, how many of you have a more complex idea about rosa parks or the montgomery bus boycott and you're telling me in the year 2020 that it's still coming down this way? that's troubling. we've had this information now for a long time. people, educators, we've had this information for a long time. and the women's political council just blows that out of the article, the idea that it was spontaneous, that they decided at the last moment. we know from garo that there was a plan in place, right? at least a loose plan. and 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 half measures. let us come in the front door, at least. have more black bus drivers. it doesn't necessarily have to be that, you know, it's an integrated bus at this point in time. but it's, no, no, to all of those things, right? so a question that i have then is why didn't we know anything about the women's political council until 1985 and then why don't you know anything about her, right? why do you think we don't know anything about her, or anything about the women's political council thus far? what is that, i can't do the math. 45 years later. what do you think accounts for that? kathryn? >> i think part of it is the image of martin luther king jr. as the leader and the figure head in all of this, if you're kind of in a sense the montgomery bus boycott is the origin point for him. and so 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 that's in keeping with what was said about rosa parks in that simple idea. did i see another hand there? okay. absolutely. and then the other thing that we have to understand is that african-americans on the ground are forging some of these ideas, right, because it is politically expedient and safer to do so. and that's important to consider when you're thinking about a marginalized group or a marginalized group or an oppressed group trying to advance their politics within any political historical moment. the african-american women that we were talking about, particularly joanne robinson, she's still a middle class african-american in the south. i'm not saying that because she's limited. she also has some gender ideologies about how she should behave as a middle class african-american woman in the south. there's some other practical reasons for why they could do that because, one, they think that's the image that should be out there. it makes the african-american men look stronger, right, it doesn't, what, emasculate them in a way. and robinson has a job at a university. i love this. 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 memographing this leaflet saying this has happened to another person. boycott the buses on monday. she blankets the town with this. and people are saying what's happening? where is this coming from? and the news reports on it that sunday afternoon, where is this coming from. she does it all in the middle of the night. she gets in trouble for it. she gets in trouble for it because she's used university property to do it, right? but the -- what, the do it yourself kind of nature of this, the hasty nature of this, she says that she already had it written to the large degree and was waiting. but there's a reason she did it behind the scenes, right, at the time -- when the montgomery advertiser is like who is responsible for this? the wpc wasn't like, hey, it's us, right? in fact, that friday -- thursday night, they distribute these leaflets. that friday, all of the african-american male ministers get together and black leaders get together to talk about what to do. and that becomes more the site of, oh, the organizing or the thrust behind that. so then there's 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 leaders. it's also because he was elected as the president on monday afternoon, the day that the boycott starts, he's elected as the president of the montgomery improvement association which was the official representative of the boycott. why do you think he's elected? does anybody know anything about king at this point in time? he's 26 years old. he's just moved to montgomery? >> as a minister, he kind of provides -- or a reverend, he provides a level of respectability to the movement. >> definitely. everybody agrees, he has a ph.d. at 26. he's got a ph.d. in theology. he's articulate, which there's a coded word. he's articulate. he presents well. definitely. but he's also new. he kind of gets pushed out front. he doesn't have any of the relationships, the patronage relationships that some of the other black male leaders do. so he's not loyal to anyone yet. and if he messes up, well, they don't lose something, right? so i'm not saying that he wasn't willing to do this or volunteered, but now think about it -- i can't remember who said it. this is the origin point for martin luther king. was that you, kathryn? yeah. 26 years old. no way did he know what this was going to mean for him, right? how he's going to be launched onto the national stage. partly because nobody thought this boycott was going to last more than a day. the reason that it was that monday was because that's when rosa parks was going to her trial, right? nobody thought that this boycott was going to last more than a day. the other reason that people think that king was the leader is because at the mass meetings, like the one that was described in the reading, the newspaper that you had, he's up front, right? and his audience is the masses, right? it's very 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, that's what this is a picture of. rosa parks, they present her and martin luther king says, you know, this person that -- we're so lucky she's the face of our movement. this person who is not a disturbing factor in the community. she's totally a disturbing factor in the community. she's standing there and she says, should i say something? and the ministers say, you've done enough. you've done enough. i find that moment interesting. she does, she sits down and i'm -- i just wonder what the dynamics were there. if she sits down because she takes their gift of, you don't have to do anymore. let us just recognize you or if it's like, no, no, we got this, right? but she sits down, right? and so it's 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 you that 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. stage drama. so part of the reason that people see him as the leader is because he's standing out front all of the time. but throughout the boycott, he and the women who have been arrested before and he are saying, it's not me. i'm not the leader. like, i'm a spokesperson. but the masses are leading this movement. and colvin says at the time the leaders are just we ourselves. when she's asked about king as being the leader. the leaders are we ourselves. she's still a teenager at this point in time, right? and, again, king is not refuting that. he considers himself lucky to be representing them. but because of the gender politics, but because of the media image and how it's being, what, positioned, there's this idea that he's the leader. but it's interesting to know that on monday, that monday, december 5th, everybody gathers at this mass meeting to assess how it's done. the association has been formed that afternoon. and the idea is that it's a boycott. a very successful. they show their strength. and all of the people in the audience are, like, we're not going back. we're not going back on those buses. especially the maids and the cooks. we're not going back on those buses. we're not suffering that humiliation anymore. so this is no longer like a -- it's a show of force in this sense. the masses decide that night, you know, we're going to continue this work. we're going to continue this. and then it becomes a matter of how you need to figure out how to run a bus boycott, how you have to run that. because, right, it says here, masses walked and i put that as an aspect of the montgomery myth. absolutely they were walking during the bus boycott, during all sorts of weather for miles and miles. there's testimony of people talking about the how they have to walk miles into work, miles out of work in that sense. i told you, it's 95% effective. you see pictures of the buses with one white lady. there's an iconic photograph with one white lady looking out the window. and there's reports of african-american threatening other african-americans if they get on the bus, right? so they're absolutely walking. but it's not reasonable to think that if they had to walk everywhere to their jobs and anywhere else they wanted to go, that this would have been as successful as it would have been. that would have just been a burden that would have been really difficult. so looking to the baton rouge example, they form a carpool, a very intricate carpool that is 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 and that sense. they have all the black taxis start to do free rides or reduced fare rides until the city makes that an illegal activity. so there's this really organized carpool that is happening and at the center -- they need funding. they need to put gas in these cars. there's recently, actually, this woman, georgia gilmore, has been recognized, she was a cook, an activist and she formed the nowhere club. and the name was kind of a joke, so when people would -- she sold all of these sandwiches and put the fuel in these cars and people would say, where did you get these sandwiches? nowhere. it's a hidden transcript kind of thing. so she's getting credit for that. but they have all -- they have this 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's fired. so she and her husband -- and her husband is fired. so she becomes one of the people who is organizing this boycott throughout the spring of 1956, it's primarily women who are running these activities. none of this is visible if you have is saintly rosa parks and suddenly the powers that be realize, this is wrong, and they desegregated the buses, right? there's a lot of work. there's a book called day break of freedom. there's no narrative. he compiles all of these documents about what was going on during the boycott and you see the memos about events planned, things that they need, how they're going to fund king going to different places to talk and things. so there's 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 that's true? or have thought that's true? you're like, this is a trick question. how many of you think that's true? i won't say that it's 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? >> i just assumed it was -- since it was -- it lasted for 382 days, i think, actually. i think if you look at it as a monetary perspective how much money they were losing, if they could sustain that, i think it was more so a monetary decision, possibly. i think that's a logical and reasonable guess. it's wrong. it should be. of course, they're crippling the bus company, right? and they're 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, carolyn. >> the civil rights act, 1964, finally -- >> no. yes, but it was legislation. it was legislation. the broader -- browder versus gayle court case. you have five plaintiffs. eventually one drops out because she's harassed. you have five plaintiffs who bring this court case against mayor gayle and the city of montgomery and the bus company. looking at that list of plaintiffs, notice any absences? who is not there? >> rosa parks. >> rosa parks is not there. during her trial on the 5th, they changed what she had been charged with. she was charged with violating the city ordnance and not giving up her seat. and the city ordinance says if there was seats available, african-americans could sit on them. the state ordinance said that african-americans had to obey whatever the bus said. it was amended in the middle of the trial and her lawyer went to appeal it because it was under appeal, she couldn't be the test case. she's not involved in this case. any other absences you might notice here? there's no men. and there's an appeal for men. and edie nixon says that a montgomery improvement association meeting, seriously, guys, you've been riding the apron strings, the apron strings of these cooks and maids forever. none of you, king, no one? you're not going to put your name to this? which is interesting because the black male ministers, the leadership, were less vulnerable because their patronage were black people. they didn't have a business. they weren't working at a university funded by white people. it's all women who have experienced arrest or harassment on the buses, including, colvin, mary lewis smith. these people who were considered not eligible, not the right fit for being the face of the movement. and they weren't, because none of you knew about them, right? you don't even know about this case. so they weren't the face of it. but this case goes forward. it starts in february -- it starts february 1st in 1956. it goes forward. this is where you get all of 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 of 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, that's why i'm here. and they keep asking -- this is where colvin says the leaders are just we ourselves. they keep trying to find out who -- about king, about king. they're pawns for king. the leaders are just we ourselves. so starts in february. in june you have a ruling. the lower court rules 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs on the grounds of that 14th amendment, right? city officials appeal. they're not giving up. the city officials appealed. november 13, the supreme court upholds that lower court ruling. city officials appeal. this is a part of what accounts that there's 381 days. african-americans are like, we're not going back on those segregated buses. december 20th, the supreme court, they didn't hear the case again. they said we won't consider the appeal. we've decided this. right? so that effectively ends the city's quest or attempt to stave off this desegregation of the city buses. the decree of that ruling reaches montgomery on december 20th, 1956. african-americans meet in their final mass meeting of the boycott and agree, okay, we got what we wanted. we'll go on the buses tomorrow, december 21st, 1956. in the morning -- that morning, you know, cameras come from all over the country and they go to martin luther king's house and watch him and ralph abernathy walk to the nearest bus station at 5:00 this morning and they take all of 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. and so they do go and find her. but she's an after thought. even as she's become the face of the movement because you're not the leader of the movement, she was the one that was relatively taken care of. this is because during the entire year, every time she appears in a public setting in relationship to the boycott, she's with men. right? very much the same way bradley was. edie nixon is standing right next to her. she's surrounded by men in suit and ties, right? she does speak after certain events and stuff, but she's right next to these authoritative-looking african-american men. they become the strength of that movement. so i think that it's really an injustice that no one knows about these women. browder had six children, she was a seamstress, she was a wife and mother, midwife. she went back to get her bachelor's degree in her 30s and got her master's degree. she was an activist. they didn't pick her the first time because they didn't think she could with stand a cross-examinenation. nobody knows about her. to that end, what melody brought up, is the idea that the boycott was short. most of you have admitted, i had a skewed idea of this. how long do you think most people, if not yourself, thought the boycott was? how long do you think most people think the boycott, now how long do you think they think is. you can yell out a number. >> a couple months. >> a few weeks. >> that's definitely, that's what i grew up thinking. and i think what allows for that is kind of that fairytale idea, right? because something so wrong wouldn't take that long. so with the browder versus gayle case, though, my question to you is, did the boycott desegregate the buses? you don't have enough information to make a -- this is where i'm planting my flag. without the boycott, what do you think? because it is not -- the browder versus gayle is what put the nail in the coffin of plessy v. ferguson. this is a huge ruling. arguably, more important or as important as brown. 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 wasn't an illegal action or might have not produced, you know, like -- might have not taken down separate versus equal. i think it definitely changed people's perceptions of what was happening with separate versus equal. a media campaign, it reverberated throughout the country. so i think you change people's hearts and you change people's minds and maybe that is playing into the myth. but you had allyship grow probably in the north which is probably what people down -- like boycotting needed. or -- yeah. >> kind of to that extent. you talked about how there were previously cases that had lost in courts about, like, buses. so desegregating them. i think that the boycott was necessary to, again, kind of help with the media, with the media push, to finalize the nail in the coffin, just because of a couple failures. >> okay. anyone else. christine, did you have your hand up? yeah, i think it's a very strong argument. the supreme court -- or court officials aren't operating in a vacuum, right? and so to understand that public opinion may be moving in a different direction, and there's 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, that's too simple, but by a northern response because this is when the movement goes national, right? this is when the movement goes national. people are sending in money from all over the world. the movement goes international, actually. there's 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. if we think again about this and you put that in a cold war context too, that's part of the reason people outside of 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 hadn't been -- they hadn't coalesced or hadn't gotten that attention before. why do you think this one got so much attention? it's not like african-americans in a city had organized around some action. it's not like that hadn't happened in montgomery before. why did this become a national media event? the answer is implied in the question. >> because they had media available? >> right, to some being, right? you can't take out the fact that we have an idea of a movement coming without considering what the circumstances were. it wasn't just a cold war thing. that's something to consider. we have new technologies and this is the first example of a movement that's considered nonviolent direct action. it's not the first time that strategy was used. but this is a when that becomes publicized. the leaders, martin luther king, recognizes they're talking about nonviolent direct action. and we're going to talk about nonviolence more in terms of a strategy, in relationship to other strategies that come later in the sense. but it's -- 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 it's also pageantry, right? it's also pageantry. when you have media cameras and journalists coming down and you see just this -- crowds and crowds, row after row after row of well-dressed african-americans stoically peacefully walking through the city, walking up to the court building, that's an image of blackness that hasn't been mainstreamed before that point in time, right? and activists -- subsequent activists take note. we're 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 have been used in other moments of their movements become something that people understand as defining the movement. that comes out of montgomery in that sense. so it has this -- it has this national presence that also, to your point, earlier point, morgan, it's not scary. it's not scary because there's no angry black people. there's no weapons, right? nobody is demanding -- they're totally demanding. nobody is demanding -- we take you live now to homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas making his first appearance on capitol hill since being confirmed. live coverage on c-span3.

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