Robinson’s Involvement in the Women’s Political Council
As the first member in her household to finish college, Robinson accomplished her aspiration to become a teaching assistant. She tutored for five years in Macon, Georgia, while receiving her master’s degree from Atlanta University. She also studied English at New York’s Columbia University and Alabama State College in Montgomery hired her in 1949. In Montgomery, she joined the Women’s Political Council (WPC), a community group organization for African American professional women committed to spreading voting registration and assisting sexual assault victims.
Once in Montgomery, a driver verbally assaulted Robinson for being in the whites exclusively area. The following year, as WPC president, she considered the resegregation of public buses a key priority. WPC reported to Montgomery city officials about uneven seats and rude drivers. The team’s complaints were rejected, leading Robinson to plot an African American peaceful protest. Rosa Parks was apprehended in December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger (Robinson 1989). They printed thousands and thousands of flyers and dispersed them throughout the metropolis. Montgomery’s black inhabitants formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and elected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to mobilize the movement.
Robinson decided to write and modify the MIA’s weekly update and helped in the rideshare scheme that assisted African Americans in traveling to work. She didn’t accept a formal stance with the organization out of worry of compromising her career at Alabama State. “Tireless, she, maybe more than any other individual, remained active on every stage of the movement,” Dr. King wrote of Robinson in his book of the campaign, Stride Toward Freedom. Despite Robinson’s heroic intentions, she was detained by some boycott organizers. She was also subjected to several threats of violence. One policeman threw a rock through her windshield and another dumped acid on her car. As a result, Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama commanded state police to protect Robinson’s and other boycott officials’ residences.
Organization of the Boycott
The emerging Montgomery Improvement Association elected Martin Luther King Jr., known as “the King,” as its new director. He was a Methodist clergyman, a public speaker, a civil rights activist, an author, and a servant of the Gospel. The group’s due to his lack of adversaries and familiarity with people in his neighborhood. In addition, he had a remarkable command of the English language. The Women’s Political Council (WPC) spearheaded the Montgomery bus boycott. The WPC was a group of black women who worked to improve the lives of African Americans. As a result of WPC’s efforts, a widespread boycott of the city’s bus system was advocated. Deputy chairperson Jo Ann Robinson presided over the group.
Role of the Women’s Political Council and Robinson
Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and other women played vital roles in this boycott, including Jo Ann Robinson’s participation in coordinating the boycott. They talk about the significance of many female demonstrators in this boycott. In Montgomery, Alabama, Mary Fair Burks developed the Women’s Political Council framework. In a seminar, she discussed the importance of women in the history of the boycott. She also distinguished between the trailblazers and the pioneers in the world of women. The black women in the defiance campaign were more courageous than their segregationist counterparts because they accepted their concepts of female legitimacy. Chappell, Ward, and Hutchinson argued a difference between the legitimacy of the protestors’ protestors’ women. As part of their argument against white critics of the campaign, they also pointed out the brutal actions taken by some white critics. White women had a lot of issues with the bus boycott, including the stories of white women yelling obscenities at black women like Walker as they drove by. It is not just African American women separating their maids between career and family.
Rosa Parks
Because of what she believed in, Rosa Parks made a stand for what she thought in, or should we say sat down? On December 1, 1955, Parks opted to sit on the bus home after work instead of taking the subway (Robinson 1989). She was sued for breaking an Alabama regulation requiring black travelers to give up their seats to white passengers whenever the bus was full after she went to sit and declined to give it up to a white passenger. At the time, blacks were forced to sit on the edge of the bus. Her incarceration triggered a 381-day Montgomery bus strike. Discrimination on public transport services was outlawed in a 1956 Supreme Court judgment.
When she was arrested, Rosa Parks called a well-known Black activist, E.D. Nixon, who helped her get a bond and decided that she would be a good defendant in a lawsuit against the city’s segregation law. Additionally, African American leaders opted to use other methods in their battle against the ordinance. Rosa Parks’ private guerilla warfare, she opposed Jim Crow by insisting on utilizing white-only elevators, bathrooms, and other amenities. When it was the moment for her to be held captive, it was ironic because Park believed she had not broken any laws.
Development of the Boycott
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks resisted her seat to a white passenger on a public bus, which sparked the boycott. African American travelers had to sit on the edge of the vehicle, whereas white passengers had to sit in the front. Those in the black section would have to give up their seats if the white area was overcrowded. A community, civil rights activist bailed out Rosa Parks after she declined to relocate to make room for a white passenger in her bus seat. Before Parks’ conviction, many more of Montgomery’s African American inhabitants had formed political organizations. Women’s Political Council (WPC) was created in 1946. It was already pressing the government for improving bus operations for years before its first bus strike. Furthermore, Montgomery had a vibrant NAACP section, where Parks served as secretary.
Despite Parks’ refusal to compromise her seat to a white passenger, community civil rights groups chose to use her detention as an opportunity to address the municipal legal segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. Before long, WPC leader Jo Ann Robinson and NAACP president E.D. Nixon had prepared and circulated pamphlets detailing Parks’s imprisonment and calling for a one-day bus boycott on December 5, just days after being arrested (Robinson 1989). The Montgomery bus service relied mainly on African American passengers, who accounted for 75%. They anticipated that the boycott would be successful. 90% of the African American residents remained away from the public transportation system on that given day.
Regional civil rights activists agreed to continue the boycott after its overwhelming success. A consortium of local clergy developed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to maintain a sustainable boycott and suit discriminatory laws in Montgomery, Alabama. The passionate Martin Luther King was chosen chairman of the MIA. Local officials hoped he could unite the diverse African American community since he was a charismatic speaker, was local to the scene, and had very few adversaries.
Role of Martin Luther King as Leader of the Boycott
Many scholars have argued that King’s most important contribution to the modern African American freedom struggle was to relate Black ambitions to transcendent, broadly accepted liberal and Christian principles. During his work with African American community activists, he instilled in them that their mission was right and consistent with traditional American egalitarian principles. In addition, King pleaded to the collective mind of all Americans, resulting in a surge in support from the public for civil rights legislation. As a result of King’s inspired leadership and lectures, a local bus-seating protest became significant. Even though peaceful protest and collaboration between races successfully defeated the legalized racial inequality in the Confederacy, they were ineffective in his later years because of the wide-ranging nature of his goals.
Role of ASU’s President, Faculty, Staff, and Students in the Bus Boycott
It is difficult, if not unattainable, to think of a significant turning point in the American civil rights narrative that didn’t involve Alabama State University in one way or another. There is little doubt that the school’s imprint can be seen in every civil rights demonstration that occurred during this period. When F.D. Reese was completing his bachelor’s degree in science at what was known as Alabama State College for Negroes in the 1940s; the school’s beginnings may be traced back to that time. His lecturers frequently probed their pupils regarding their views on civil rights topics, hoping to elicit reactions from them.
As a pioneer in the campaign, Reese invited King to join Selma’s voter rights campaign, making him a household name. Students and faculty alike were warned to stay away from buses on Rosa Parks’ trial by Jo Ann Robinson. She utilized the university’s mimeograph printer and printed out hundreds of posters. Like Vera Harris, an Alabama State alumna who assisted in distributing the pamphlets, others helped get the campaign’s message through as many minds as possible. When the 1961 Civil Rights activists came to Montgomery, they were severely beaten. Harris and her husband opened their residence to the group, discussed how to get Rosa Parks cleared, how to have the laws allowing her arrest proclaimed unlawful and how to get the public interested in a boycott. If they intended to rouse the crowd, they understood they had to organize a conference with area clergy.
Robinson enlisted the assistance of her pastor, King, in the subsequent planning of the boycott. For his part, Gray would go on to effectively defend Parks’ appeal and several other important civil rights issues, which included a court filing that compelled public officials to permit the Selma–to–Montgomery protest to go through. Gray submitted federal cases four years after ASU students staged their historic sit-in at the Montgomery Local Courthouse, which helped influence not only apartheid but also university students’ right to constitutional protections and the strengthening of state and federal Laws (Robinson 1989). Students from Alabama State University recruited around 800 learners to reach the Selma–Montgomery protesters before they arrived at St. Jude and completed the final part of the protest to the Capitol just before marchers landed in Montgomery.
The WPC’s Overall Importance in Montgomery Protest
Even though most of the media coverage focused on the acts of black preachers, women played a major part in the boycott’s accomplishment. Many women like Robinson, Carr, and West kept the committee meetings and voluntary connections running smoothly. It was also Mary Fair Burks of the WPC who credited the anonymous cooks and maids who traveled countless distances to introduce the break in the barriers of discrimination to the achievement of the protest. Older women who supported the boycott were doing it for the welfare of their kids and grandkids.
Reference
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson. 1989. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started it: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville, TN.: Univ. of Tennessee Press.