"They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there was nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."
The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott was the most effective economic social action conducted by Black Americans, and building on this remarkable non-violent protest lasting 381 days, nearly two decades of creative social action persisted by Black Americans in what became known as the Civil Rights Movement.
Black citizens, business and religious leaders were stirred to launch the boycott of the Montgomery bus system one weekend, fueled by news of Mrs. Rosa Parks’s arrest on a Friday evening, December 1, 1955, because she would not give up her seat to a white man. The furious telephone calls, ad hoc meetings, decision to boycott and monumental photocopying of flyers announcing the call to boycott to Black residents occurred between that fateful Friday evening, the end of a weary work week, and the following Sunday, the night before many Black citizens of Montgomery would have to return to work the next morning. The boycott began the first work day of the following week, on Monday, December 5, 1955.
Mrs. Park’s arrest was the latest social injustice in a long series of injustices and indignities that Black citizens had suffered at the hands of bigoted Whites in Montgomery, and across the country.
It is instructive to consider that over the course of three days the Montgomery organizers put together a plan, publicized the action, and successfully carried off the first day of the boycott, even in the face of expressed doubts about how long the boycott should be planned for and what, if any, impact the boycott might have.
The dramatic events of that year-long boycott are told in Stride Toward Freedom, an invaluable memoir of the nearly day-to-day activities of the Montgomery bus boycott, written by a twenty-six year old Baptist preacher who had been elected to the movement's leadership, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The story is a must read for Black Americans—all Americans really—as it provides a view from the first-hand account of Dr. King about how a system of entrenched discrimination sabotages the social and economic progress of its victims. It also demonstrates how a people unified by the necessarily self-interested values of self-determination and dignity overcame legalized oppression utilizing little else than their sustained and determined will to improve their lives.
It may be surprising to some that over the harried weekend of planning, Dr. King struggled with the idea of a "boycott." At that time, some persons who also participated in the planned response to Mrs. Parks’s arrest, compared the proposed bus boycott to boycotts conducted throughout the South by the racists White Citizen Councils, whose purpose was to deny goods and services to the Black community. Dr. King was certain that the Whites’ discrimination was of evil intent, but he questioned whether Blacks participating in a boycott was not as immoral as bigoted White groups. Was a boycott a negative action, when what was intended was a positive action, “to give birth to justice and freedom, and to urge men to cooperate with the law of the land...,” he asked.??He reconciled his struggle by recalling Henry David Thoreau's “Essay on Civil Disobedience.” The answer for Dr. King was non-cooperation. He wrote:
“When oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient justification for his acts. ... So, in order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system. This I felt was the nature of our action. From this moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive noncooperation. From then on I rarely used the word, "boycott."
Finally, Monday, December 5th arrived. Dr. King and the organizers waited to see what would happen. Would the Black Montgomery citizens unify, would the boycott be a success?
Dr. King and the other Black leaders had hoped for about 60% cooperation of the people. Early on Monday morning, Dr. King later wrote, he and Mrs. King were up and dressed by 5:30am, waiting to see the first buses of the morning ride by their street. Soon, looking out their living room window, they saw an empty bus ride by—a bus normally filled with domestic workers.
"I jumped in my car and for almost an hour I cruised down every major street and examined every passing bus. During this hour at the peak of morning traffic, I saw no more than eight Negro passengers riding the buses." Jubilant, Dr. King said he realized that instead of 60% cooperation the Black community of Montgomery was participating at nearly 100%."
One of the most powerful passages of Stride Toward Freedom is Dr. King's description of the beautiful sight of men and women participating on that first day of the "massive noncooperation," which was sustained through the rest of 1955:
"During the rush hours the sidewalks were crowded with laborers and domestic workers, many of them well past middle age, trudging patiently to their jobs and home again, sometimes as much as twelve miles. They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there was nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."
The republication of Stride Toward Freedom provides an opportunity for new generations to review this historic grass roots action, and to observe how the activism of a relative few initiated changes in the social order of the entire country. Take on its own merit, the story is educational, unifying and inspiring. As contemporary readers plan social action campaigns, we recommend that participants get together and read aloud selections from Stride Toward Freedom, or other narratives of social protests. This activity will frame their current purpose with historical perspective, inspire unity, strengthen resolve, and help to ensure sustained success in this new effort.
This article appeared in a slightly different form on blogspot.devotionreader.com on October 30, 2007.
