Montgomery, AL –It was the end of a long work day on December 1, 1955, but the passengers going home on the Cleveland Avenue bus couldn’t believe what they were seeing. “Are you going to stand up?, ” the driver James Blake demanded. “No, I don’t think I should have to stand up,” protested Rosa Parks. “Then I’m going to have you arrested, ” Blake warned. “You may do that,” replied Parks. The 42 year old seamstress had refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. Bus drivers had adopted a practice of asking Black passengers to move when no white only seats were left. History is full of stories about ordinary people cast into extraordinary circumstances, but Parks was no ordinary person. Having grown up in the segregated South, Parks had faced discrimination and violence. She had been involved in civil rights movement and had served as a secretary and youth leader for the Montgomery NAACP.

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired . . . the only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” Parks later recalled. That night she was arrested, taken to police headquarters and later released on bail. News of her arrest quickly spread in the Black community. Leaflets were printed and distributed. Ads were taken out in local papers. People were encouraged to stay off buses and encouraged to walk or take cabs. On December 5, 1955, leaders from the Black community met at Mt. Zion Baptist Church to discuss strategies for the boycott. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected as its leader a newcomer, 26 year old Martin Luther King, minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King believed Parks’ case provided an excellent opportunity to create real change. Later that day Parks was found guilty of violating a public ordinance and fined $14.00.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for 381 days. It is estimated that the transportation company and downtown businesses lost three thousand dollars per day in revenue. In June of 1956, the U.S. District Court of Alabama declared segregation laws unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the decision, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. Facing financial and legal defeats, the city of Montgomery had no choice, but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956 and on December 21, 1956, Black passengers entered the buses through the front door, inspired by what could be accomplished by organized protest, but victory did not come easy. King’s home was bombed. Black protesters were often harassed or shot at by racist whites and Parks and her husband Raymond, both lost their jobs because of their actions and eventually moved to Detroit.

To learn more about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus boycott, visit the Rosa Parks Library and Museum: https://www.troy.edu/student-life-resources/arts-culture/rosa-parks-museum/index.html

Walking the streets of Montgomery can be unsettling. Everywhere you go there are ghosts of its past. The city was once a major slave depot. Between 1808 and 1860 Montgomery’s enslaved population grew from 40,000 to 435,000. Enslaved people were confined in warehouses with livestock and bales of cotton, auctioned in markets and often separated from their families.

“Slavery is the next closest thing to hell,” Harriet Tubman.

If you only visit one place in Montgomery, visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial Peace and Justice . The museum run by the Equal Justice Initiative is an immersive exhibit of the the African American experience from slavery, lynching and the civil rights movement to modern day mass incarceration. The memorial commemorates the thousands of lives lost to racial terror lynching. Located a mile apart there are shuttles that run between both places. For more information and to reserve tickets: https://legacysites.eji.org/

Around the corner from the Alabama state capitol and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached is the Civil Rights Memorial Center. Commissioned by The Southern Poverty Law Center it is the first memorial to commemorate the martyrs of the civil rights movement. The monument was designed by Chinese American artist Maya Lin, the creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. For more information and to visit the memorial: https://www.splcenter.org/civil-rights-memorial

How many grains of sand are in a seashell? How many bubbles are in a bar of soap? If you were Black and attempting to register to vote in Selma, Alabama in 1965 you might have been subjected to questions like these. You would also be required to pay poll taxes. These tactics were used to disenfranchise Black voters who made up 57 percent of the population but less than two percent of registered voters. This led civil rights leaders to focus their efforts on registering more voters in Alabama.

Efforts to organize and register voters were met with strong resistance. On February 18, 1965, state troopers broke up a non violent march. While attempting to protect his mother and grandfather, 26 year old Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot twice in the abdomen by a state trooper. Jackson died from his wounds eight days later. In response to Jackson’s death, civil rights leaders planned a 54 mile march from Selma to Montgomery taking their concerns to Governor George Wallace . Led by the Reverend Hosea Williams and future U.S. Congressman John Lewis, 600 marchers set out on March 7, 1965. As they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by state troopers and white vigilantes who viciously attacked them with baseball bats, clubs, whips and tear gas. This became known as “Bloody Sunday.” News footage of the attack drew outrage across the nation.

At Martin Luther King’s urging, hundreds of ministers, priests, rabbis and social activists joined the march two days later. Two thousand people marched from Brown AME Chapel to the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were once again met by state troopers. King lead them in prayer, they then chose to turn back. King was criticized and called a coward by some marchers. That night James Reeb, a white minister from Massachusetts and two other ministers were attacked by an angry white mob. Reeb was beaten into a coma and died two days later.

On March 20, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to supervise and protect marchers as they proceeded from Selma to Montgomery. King and other marchers successfully crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 21st and arrived in Montgomery four days later. King and other civil rights leaders addressed the crowd at the state capitol which had grown to 50,000. That evening, Viola Liuzzo, a 39 year old white Detroit mother of five who had come to Alabama in support of the march was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members as she was helping to drive members of the march home.

On August 6th, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. To learn more about the fight for voting rights and the Selma to Montgomery march you can visit the Lowndes Interpretative Center located on Highway 80 between Selma and Montgomery. Operated by the National Park Service, the center sits on land once known as “Tent City.” Tent City was erected in 1965 to house Black tenant farmers and their families who had been evicted from their homes by white landowners for attempting to register to vote in Alabama.https://www.nps.gov/semo/learn/historyculture/lowndes-interpretive-center.htm

Jake Williams owner and operator of My Montgomery Tours was a participant in the Selma to Montgomery march. Jake has an excellent knowledge of history and a wealth of knowledge to share. You can book a tour with him at: https://www.mymontgomerytours.com/