Black Women Of The “Modern Civil Rights” Movement

By Moondustgypsy1

The role of black women in the “modern” civil rights movement from Montgomery, Alabama, set the tone that would play an instrumental part in starting the social protest movement, at the grassroots-local level. The vision of Mary Fair Burks, the dedication of Joanne Robinson, along with the youthful defiance of Claudette Colvin and the strong will of a determined Rosa Parks, not only iniated the boycott but also ignited it. In the same way that Parks would become the “catalyst” (1) of the movement demonstrating the courage to fight racial injustice, it was the foresight of Burks who was the early pioneer of the women’s movement who set out on the course to fight for equal justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, where the Jim Crow laws were alive and working.

In 1946, the Women’s Political Council was founded by Mary Fair Burks, who was also, the Chairwoman and Professor of English at Alabama State College, to address the ongoing racial problems that existed in the segregated city of Montgomery, Alabama. (2) The foremost influence who inspired Burks to form the WPC, against racial segregation, was listening to the sermons preached by Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Minister, Vernon Johns, whose social gospel was viewed as a “one-man protest against segregation“. He disliked apathy and called upon blacks not to be so complacent, while keeping the problems blacks faced on the forefront, and taking issue with the white power structure‘s attitude, in Montgomery, also. (3)

Burks realized that defiance alone wouldn’t bring about change as she had experienced racism first-hand when she was arrested. With her interest to mobilize middle-class black women to fight segregation. In addition, she was able by early autumn of 1946 to gather forty women to attend the first organizational meeting of the WPC. (4) This new endeavor happened before the legal decisions of either, Brown vs. Board of Education or Plessy vs. Ferguson. The objective of the first meeting was to raise political issues in protesting racial inequalities, and defining the objectives of the WPC. The immediate tasks of the WPC was registering black voters, protesting the bus abuses, opening up the parks’ for blacks, and helping with making literacy attainable for blacks. The two short-term successes was the WPC’s ability to advocate change in registering black voters and fighting the city commissioners of Montgomery to open the parks. The WPC set up voter registration in local churches and by the persistent efforts of the WPC’s members, helped increase the numbers of black voters. They showed them how to fill out the forms and brought them to the courthouse to find out the results. Burks argued with the city’s commissioners that blacks paid taxes for the parks, the city officials did not yield because of the separate facilities allowed under Plessy. The fight by Burks’early on with the segregated parks’ issue was a precursor to the attitudes blacks faced, with the hostile city officials that sustained itself through the boycott. (5)

Robinson like Burks was a professor of English at Alabama State College. Burks was fond of Robinson’s dedication to the cause. In 1949, she was forced to take a bus when she went home for Christmas to Cleveland, Ohio. In boarding the bus she got sat down in the front section nearly an empty bus. The bus driver yelled at her and raised his arms as if he was going to strike her. This left a lasting memory with her and made her “feel like a dog“. (6) Returning home she joined the WPC to protest now what was first-hand knowledge she experienced by the white bus driver. (7) By 1950 Robinson succeeded Burks as President of the WPC. The bulk of the membership of the WPC were women who were inspired by Burks and later proved to play central roles as members in organizing the mass boycotts, in Montgomery. (8) By 1953, the WPC had received over thirty complaints by black riders over abuses suffered from the bus drivers on the city buses. (9)

The bus drivers not only hid behind the laws of segregation, but each they also carried a gun. A man by the name of Brooks was killed by police in 1952 over ten-cent dispute, over bus fare. (10) The idea of a bus boycott had been talked about for years. By 1954 with increasing intimidation, humiliation, and violence that black riders suffered at the behest of the white bus drivers led Robinson to make the bus abuse issue, her top priority as President of the WPC. (11) Like Burks’ before her, Robinson demanded a meeting with the city commissioners and bus company officials to discuss the abuses black riders had by the bus drivers. The city officials, including Mayor W.A. Gayle excused their actions, on the grounds that they were only upholding city segregation laws. (12) In Montgomery the policy of the segregated bus system was the front of the bus was for whites, and the back of the bus was for blacks, in proportion to the number of blacks or whites on, at any given time. If more whites came on the bus blacks had to leave their seats. The official policy was that if there were no seats available for blacks to move as additional whites got on, blacks did not have give up their seats. (13) It was on May 21, 1954, four days after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision , Robinson sent Gayle a letter reminding him that three-quarters of the riders were black and the buses could not operate without them, while hinting that a boycott would be imminent, if the conditions were not improved on the buses. (14)

By 1955, the WPC had a surge in growth as its membership base grew to include 300 members with three different chapters of the organization within Montgomery. Robinson’s immediate goal to integrate the bus system or put it out of business had gained momentum. These various chapters in different parts of the city helped to distribute boycott notices, and later it would help set up communication lines with the communication effort in the transportation lines, during the boycott. (15)

In early 1955, the WPC had received, an increasing number of complaints regarding bus abuses by black riders. It was at this time that Robinson wanted to wage the boycott that could put the bus company out of business. When Robinson heard that E.D. Nixon, President of the Progressive Democratic Association and Rufus Lewis, President of the Citizens Steering Committee were unable to obtain a meeting with city officials over the ongoing human rights’ abuses of blacks, she set out on her own to protest the increase of bus fares, first. The City Commissioners who had authority over bus company officials were put into office because of the whites who voted for them. Thus, blacks needed a strong organization to defend it against a powerful white Mayor who claimed bus drivers were only doing their job upholding the city ordinance, of segregation laws. (16)

It was the arrest of fifteen year old Claudette Colvin, an active member in the NAACP youth council, that mobilized black leaders in a united front against segregation. Her arrest on March 2, 1955, was a pivotal moment in the struggle because she was not in the restricted ten seats and was far enough back to be entitled to her seat. She was dragged off the bus and charged with resisting arrest and violating the city’s segregation laws. (17) She was tried under state law rather than the city ordinance she was arrested under. Claudette’s arrest sent shock waves of alarm across the black community and mothers started to worry about their daughters’ safety. Colvin’s advisor in the youth council was Rosa Parks, and when she told her version of the arrest to Nixon and Robinson, she told them that Ms. Parks said “always do what is right” while also maintaining your dignity. Parks who knew Claudette’s mother growing up, helped set up a legal fund for her. (18)

The WPC became increasingly active with Colvin’s arrest and expedited plans for a bus boycott. The timing had to be right, people had to be prepared, and a blemish-free person was needed to be the catalyst of the movement. With Claudette being fifteen years old and subsequently the knowledge of her pregnancy, black leaders terminated the idea of her being the symbol, to lead the bus boycott. The WPC went ahead planning strategy, formulating literature, and when the time was right, to make what happened to Claudette publicly known. (19)

The practice of segregation and “reserved seats” had become a dirty word to blacks who had to give up their seats, including elderly, women and children, to whites even whites were not riding. Rosa Parks did not join them to protest the increase of bus fares or the bad behavior of the bus drivers, even though Rev. King and Robinson had worked in unison for this meeting. She rejected the notion of attending any meeting with pro-segregationist city officials to discuss the petition , regarding a new seating arrangement, as she considered this compromise quite demeaning. (20)

The defining moment of the “modern” Civil Rights Movement was when a dignified seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded the bus after a tiring day at work. Parks was not a stranger to the movement, as a former secretary of the NAACP, when Nixon was its leader. Two months before the boycott was to start Parks’ attended a desegregation workshop at the Highlander Folk School, in Monteagle, Tennessee, learning strategies for activism, to fight segregation laws. The ordeal of Claudette Colvin had a significant impact upon Parks decision to attend the school’s workshop. It focus dealt with voting rights and school desegregation. (21) Parks recognized more than anything, that Highlander was integrated, thus dispelling the previous held myth that desegregation couldn’t be accomplished. The theme of the workshop was: “Radical Desegregation: Implementing the Supreme Court Decision”, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation seating was unconstitutional, in Columbia, South Carolina. (22)

On Thursday December 1, 1955, Parks boarded the bus at Cleveland Avenue at Court Square. She sat down in the first row of the middle section of seats, an area open to blacks as long as no whites were left standing. The bus driver James Blake who had evicted her in 1943, was the same driver, this day. (23) Since that day in 1943, Parks usually avoided boarding the bus he was driving. (24) She refused to give up her seat , to a white man, and Blake then summoned the police to arrest her. The “no” that she gave to Blake was a collective “no” to all those in the black community. (25) Parks asked the arresting police officers, “why do you push us around”, and Officer Day responded with, “the law is the law.” She was quite angered by the humiliation she suffered when she was denied water at city hall, after her arrest because the sign above the water said, “Whites Only”. At this time she knew the police were wrong as she had obeyed the law and she was taken to jail for sitting in the “colored section”. (26) She was arrested and taken to jail for violating the law that banned integration. In being a valiant warrior in the struggle, Parks remembered what Rev. King had said about the sacrifice for the benefit of the struggle, when he said, “some of us must bear the burden of trying to save the soul of America”. (27) When Blake used the Jim Crow laws against her, she realized that the time was now for her to carry that burden.

The news of Rosa Parks’ arrest traveled fast. When E.D. Nixon found out about her arrest he phoned the white liberal attorney Clifford Durr, and they went to bail her out. Nixon put up the bond and signed the paper to secure her release from jail. Nixon had phoned Robinson that same night and told her of the arrest. Robinson agreed with Nixon that Parks was the ideal person to legally test the segregation laws. (28) Realizing this Nixon confronted Parks and said to her, “with your permission, we can break down segregation on the bus with your case.” She agreed to test the constitutionality of the city’ ordinance. (29)

The legal fight that was to be waged and the boycott in the days to follow, was due to the efforts of the proactive duty Parks had for civil rights. Her actions gave way to the beginning of the “modern” civil rights movement. (30) Her trial was set for Monday December 5, 1955, and by this time the WPC had enough. (31)

As with the Colvin case, the WPC wanted to test the legalities of segregation and take social action until the goal was reached. Robinson informed attorney Fred Gray that, “The Women’s Political Council will not wait for Mrs. Parks’ consent to call for a boycott of city buses. On Friday December 2, 1955, the women of Montgomery will call for a boycott to take place on Monday December 5”. (32) In order to inform people to stay off the buses Robinson moved to distribute notices to every black home in Montgomery, to reiterate the violations of basic human abuses of blacks on the buses. Staying up all night and using the excuse of correcting papers Robinson copied 350,000 copies off the mimieograph machine at Alabama State College. To avoid being traced, she did not print her name, or the name of the WPC, on the notices because she thought if found out, that the state might cut funding to this all-black school. (33) By the time the notices had made its destination in homes and businesses that Friday, the boycott was set to go off that Monday, uncertainty notwithstanding within the black community, of whether it would succeed or fail. (34) In part the notice stated: “Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown into jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus and give it to a white person. This is the second time since the Claudette Colbert (sic) case...This must be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes...” (35)

Robinson’s commitment to the objectives of the WPC was evident when she was confronted by Alabama State College President Dr. H. Trenholm about using the mimieograph machine to make copies. She assured him that she wouldn’t involve the college and she would reimburse the costs of the copies made. Although she realized she could lose her job, Robinson at this point no longer cared if she was fired. She told him the abuses blacks faced at the behest of white bus drivers. She told him about the arrests of Colvin and Parks, thus making him realize that a responsible organization, like the WPC was needed to take the iniative to act against city hall. (36)

By December 5, 1955, the black community in Montgomery, were on its way to as a collective group to release its painful emotions of past abuses in a mass protest, picking up where Rosa Parks had left off, only four days earlier. The malfeaseant behavior behavior of the bus drivers, police, and city officials would be met with peaceful resistance from the WPC, and demonstrated the strength the women had in this struggle. On this same day, Rosa Parks was found guilty in violating the city’s segregation laws and had to pay a total of fourteen dollars to the court. That night, at the Holt Street Church it was the men of Montgomery, most notably the black ministers, who would have to decide if the civil rights struggle was worth fighting for at this point. (37) The agreement understood by the WPC was that if the boycott was a success that Monday, the ministers led by Rev. King would let those in attendance that night decide whether or not to continue with the boycott. It was also revealed at this meeting that the one-day boycott was an overall success, with few people riding the buses that day. Those in attendance unanimously voted in favor to extend the one-day boycott, started by the WPC. (38)

The boycott that started on Monday December 5, 1955 would last for thirteen months. The pursuit of the boycott did not end in vain, but rather ended in victory. In June of 1956, a three-judge federal District Court voted that the bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. Despite the appeal of the city commissioners to the U.S. Supreme Court over the lower court’s ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the decision, on November 13, 1956. The written mandate arrived in Montgomery on December 20, 1956. From the genesis of Parks’ refusal to leave her seat to the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, as Robinson would say that the white man was forced to recognize the legitimacy of citizenship for blacks, through the legal system. (39)

In conclusion, one can’t say enough how important the role of women played in how the civil rights movement started, in Montgomery, and its lasting historical significance, into the 21st Century. In simple terms, the men who came later to lead the movement into the 1960’s were given their start due to the efforts of the Montgomery women. The leadership of the WPC under Burks and Robinson preceded the significant role that ministers like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have in the organizations of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Southern Leadership Council. In looking back at the contributions of the women from Montgomery and the sacrifice they made for all, Burks called Robinson the “Joan of Arc” of the movement. Robinson’s sacrifice was seen clearly when she and seventeen other professors were fired from Alabama State College after the boycott. Burks called Parks, the “patron saint” of the movement for her refusal to leave her seat. (40) In short, Burks referred to the women as the trailblazers of the movement, while calling the men, the torchbearers, as the women led the struggle. (41) To argue with Burks’ analysis would alter the historical significance of The “Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It,” that being the memoir of Joanne Robinson.

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