Civil Rights Movement & U.S. Multicultural Society

The Montgomery bus boycott of the 1950s was a watershed event in the fledgling civil rights movement. For years, the city bus system in Montgomery, Alabama had been segregated. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black domestic worker, refused to give up her seat to a white male passenger. Parks was arrested and charged for violating a municipal ordinance. The arrest of Parks, who was a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), enraged the black community; within days, she was tried and found guilty.

Taking advantage of the community outrage over the treatment of Parks, the NAACP sprung into action. The members met with a coalition of black ministers, among them Martin Luther King Jr. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed, and King was appointed as president: "Although King had been in Montgomery for only a year and was just 26 years old, he was educated, the best speaker, and a minister, all assets which would pull the black community together" (Anderson, 1995, p. 45). The bus boycott lasted for a year and was an unmitigated success; it generated publicity and put the

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uring the next phase of the Civil Rights movement, the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Rides were organized by CORE to protest the continued practice of segregation of transportation facilities in the South. Reporters were invited along on the ride as two buses containing black and white volunteers made their way from Washington, D.C. As the buses reached the deep South, the occupants were subjected to extreme violence at the hands of whites, who severely injured some of the occupants. All the violence was caught on tape and broadcast. The Kennedy Administration was forced to provide protection by the National Guard for subsequent rides. During the summer of 1964, blacks and whites worked together to get Southern blacks registered to vote. Their efforts were concentrated in Mississippi, and the campaign became known as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. That summer proved extremely violent for the civil rights workers. National attention focused on the brutal murders of volunteers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, two whites and one black, whose disappearance set off a massive search headed by the FBI. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were not the only casualties: "This set the tone for a summer in which the re
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Approximate Word count = 1911
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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