On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman travelling on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white male and stand at the back of the bus as was required by law. She was arrested and fined $10.  Rosa was an NAACP activist and it was clear to the NAACP that Rosa Parks’ case could be used to highlight the unfairness of discrimination. On the day of her trial, members of the NAACP organised a 24hour bus boycott. This was so successful that it was decided to continue this protest. The Montgomery Improvement Association was set up (MIA) and the bus boycott continued. Since 75% of the bus company’s business was made up of black passengers, the boycott was very damaging. The black people of Montgomery either walked or shared lifts though car pools to get to work  with the slogan, ‘People don’t ride the bus today. Don’t ride it for freedom’.  A young Baptist preacher called Martin Luther King was chosen to lead the protest. He was a brilliant and moving speaker who believed in non-violent political protest The Montgomery Bus boycott put him in the national spotlight:

The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right. There will be no crosses burned at any bus stops in Montgomery. There will be no white persons pulled out of their homes and taken out on some distant road and murdered. There will be nobody among us who will stand up and defy the constitution of the Nation’

The boycott lasted for 381 days. Finally, following much national publicity, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional; this also implied that all segregation of public services was illegal.

Throughout the boycott, the leaders were intimidated and arrested, churches and homes were set on fire. However, the end result  was a great victory for the non-violence of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther king emerged a key leader of the civil rights movement. He went on to form the Southern Christian Leadership conference (SCLC) which trained civil rights activists in non-violent tactics.

In December 1960, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of all bus station facilities.  To test whether integration was taking place, CORE activists – black and white in 1961 began ‘freedom rides’. They faced some of the worst violence of the civil rights campaign; riders were stoned, beaten with baseball bats, buses were fire-bombed. The police looked the other way. Over the summer, more than 400 freedom riders were arrested – many more were beaten up.  Nightly television pictures angered many. It forced the Inter-state Commerce Commission and the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert Kennedy to enforce segregation on inter-state transportation.

During the late 1950s, there were several other examples of direct action. In 1960 four black students asked to be served at a white only counter in Woolworth’s in Greensboro. The next day, 23 more students did the same. The next day there were 66 students – both black and white. Within eighteen months, 70,000 had taken part in similar sit-ins and 3,000 had been arrested. These demonstrations were supported by a new student organisation known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By the end of 1960, lunch counters had been desegregated in 126 cities. (See photo above)

The freedom rides showed how white violence against civil rights protesters displayed on images in the media could help achieve increased support for the civil rights movement. In April 1963, Martin Luther King decided to take on Birmingham, Alabama, which he called ‘The most segregated city in the United States’. The Chief Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, provided the kind of reaction that he was hoping for: in full flare of the media he used electric cattle prods, powerful water hoses and vicious dogs to attack the peaceful marchers.  1.000 marchers, including hundreds of children and Martin Luther King himself, were arrested.

The scenes in Birmingham were again shown on national television and caused anger at home and condemnation abroad. The government was forced to act; President Kennedy pressured Governor Wallace to get all prisoners released and the Supreme Court had declared that Birmingham’s segregation laws were unconstitutional.

The most high profile event of this period of Civil Rights activism was the march to Washington organised by King. About 250,000 demonstrators attended and King gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. The march was a great publicity success and put further pressure on Kennedy to push through his civil rights bill which he had introduced earlier in the year.

To bring more attention to the issue of voting rights, King now organised another high profile march through Selma, Alabama. Here, only 383 blacks out of 15,000 had been able to register to vote and the sheriff, Jim Clarke was similar in his attitude to racial equality as Bull Connor in Birmingham. Again, King realised that brutal treatment of the marchers would again be televised and again work in favour of the movement. On what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’, on 7^th March the marchers were indeed subjected to clubs and tear gas. As a result of this President Johnson agreed to introduce a voting act. The march from Selma to Montgomery also went ahead peacefully in the end with King leading 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery.