Legal Assault On Segregation
The Brown Case
Montgomery bus boycott
The brown case did not initiate the modern civil rights movement, it had started earlier during World war two. After the early 50’s there was a resurgence of the civil rights movement and the Jim Crow laws were met with mass resistance. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa parks, a black tailor’s assistant, was on her way home on the bus when she was asked to give up her seat for a white woman on the bus. After parks had refused she was detained by police. Her arrest sparked a bus boycott that would last a year. Parks had always been an active in the civil rights movement, during the 1930’s she participated in protests against the conviction of the Scottsboro boys and was a secretary to E.D, Nixon who was the leader of the local NAACP. In 1943 she had attempted to register to vote but had failed a literacy test however in 1954 she was one of the few blacks in Montgomery that was able to cast a ballot. Jo Ann Robinson a professor at an all-black University had called for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system since 1954. After parker’s arrest hundreds of blacks banded together and refused to ride the buses for 381 days, finally in 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregate transportation unconstitutional.
Daybreak of Freedom
The bus boycott was the catalyst for the nonviolent movement against racial injustice. Around this time one of the most important civil rights leaders Martin Luther king Jr. Had moved to Alabama in order to become a pastor. On December 1, 1955 before the bus boycott was officially announced torn piece of cardboard on Montgomery that said "Don't ride the buses today, don't ride it for freedom" On the summer 1964 freedom schools were established in Mississippi answers varied from specific to abstract. One chiild wrote freedom of the mind was the greatest freedom of all.