Olivia Dixon
February 28, 2015

Montgomery Bus Boycott In 1877 segregation began to take place and spread like wildfire across the southern region of the nation. At this time in history, African Americans had no right and were sold as property. Claudette Colvin was a black activists had begun to build a case to challenge state bus segregation laws because of her arrest. Claudette was a student at Booker T.
Washington High School in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. At the time, Colvin was an active member in the NAACP Youth Council, a group to which Rosa Parks served as advisor. Rosa Parks was a seamstress by profession She was also the secretary for the
Montgomery NAACP. Twelve years before her history­making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driver James F. Blake, because he told her to board at the back door and then drove off without her. Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake.
As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama, to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor. The protest that came to be around the Taylor case was the first instance of a nationwide civil rights protest, and it laid the groundwork for the
Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to give up her seat to a white man. The city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Therefore, Parks wasn’t breaking the law. Between the arrests of Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin, the city of Montgomery was in an uproar after they heard on the arrests. The boycott was lead by a Women’s
Political Activist named Jo Ann Robinson. She printed and circulated fliers telling people of the boycott. They had begun a strike which would be later known as the Montgomery
Bus Boycott. The residents of Montgomery refused to ride the transit system for 381 days even though the buses were a major part of their lives. Most of the residents didn’t own their own cars because they were far too expensive to own on their salary. Most of the people would carpool to school or work. Since not many African Americans owned cars, they were fitting six plus people into a four person car. Most residents would