5
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Nixon, E.D.(1899–1987):
Union leader, president
of Alabama’s NAACP, and
organizer of the Montgo-
mery bus boycott.‘
N
iggers, get back!’ white bus drivers barked at black passengers in
Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1950s. Blue-collar blacks suffered
such indignities twice daily because most did not have cars. Three-
quarters of the bus riders were black, but no bus driver was black. Buses
stopped at every corner in white neighborhoods and every other corner in
black ones. Some drivers took perverse delight in speeding by blacks wait-
ing at bus stops. All drivers compelled blacks to exit the front door after they
paid and to re-board through the rear door. Occasionally, the drivers left blacks
stranded after paying, cheating them out of their fares. Once on the bus, black
riders had to stay out of the first ten rows, which were reserved for whites,
and stand beside empty seats when the black section was filled.
Not only could blacks not ride in the front of the bus, they lived their
entire lives apart from whites. Blacks were born in separate hospitals,
attended separate, inferior schools, and were buried in separate cemeteries.
Blacks asked in vain for the city to provide adequate fire and police protec-
tion, pave the streets, extend the sewer lines, set aside playgrounds, and pick
up garbage regularly in their neighborhoods. With little education and jobs
limited to domestics and laborers, the median income of blacks was half that
of whites. This poverty explains why blacks rode the buses so frequently.
A few Montgomery blacks and whites risked dismissal, arson, and mur-
der to protest against such discrimination. The intrepid leader of the local
civil rights movement was E.D. Nixon, a roughhewn railroad porter who
had long led the NAACP’s city and state branches. To change the lot of
Alabama’s blacks, he launched a voter-registration drive for the 93 per cent
of them who could not vote. Rufus Lewis, an undertaker and former college
football coach, likewise promoted black registration through the Citizens’
Steering Committee. Jo Ann Robinson, a fiery English professor at Alabama
State College, presided over the Women’s Political Council, a group of
educated black women that got out the black vote and pressured the
police department to hire blacks. Both Lewis and Robinson belonged to the
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson
(1912–1992): Alabama
State College professor
who helped organize the
Mongomery bus boycott.Montgomery Bus Boycott:
The first large-scale protest
of the modern civil rights
movement.