Black civil rights in America.
From December 5th 1955 until December 1956, the Black community of Montgomery Alabama refused to use the city’s bus service. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was started by the actions of Rosa Parks, organised by the Montgomery Improvement Association and led by Martin Luther King. This significant event was triggered by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her sear on a bus for a white person. However, the boycott had its roots in the position and treatment of Black people in the United States of America, especially in the Southern States. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was ultimately successful in ending segregation of buses in Montgomery. More importantly, the success of the boycott provided a strong boost to overall civil rights movement to push for more change.
A long term cause of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was the way that black people continued to be treated, especially in the Southern States like Montgomery, Alabama. Since before the 1860’s black slavery was legal and very common in the USA. Black Africans were captured, transported to America and sold to work on cotton and tobacco plantations in the Southern States. This is how the unfair treatment of Black Americans began. In 1865 slavery was made illegal however the treatment of black people was not much different. From 1877-1900 ‘Jim Crow’ laws were put in place. Segregation in the Southern States was deeply entrenched. The Jim crow laws segregated blacks from whites. These laws applied to toilets, housing areas, trains, buses, schools, hotels, restaurants, hospitals etc. The U.S government said separate but equal was okay, however equality qas not demonstrated, for example, in Mississippi the state/county funding per student in white schools was $98.15, whereas the funding per student in black schools was only $43.17. The government did not enforce this rule of separate but equal. The Jim Crow laws were supported with intimidation and violence. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan...