The Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama was a crucial event in the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement. On the evening of December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, a Montgomery seamstress on her way home from work, refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man and was subsequently arrested. The President of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), E.D. Nixon, used the arrest to launch a bus boycott to fight the city’s segregated bus policy. Together with Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council, and other black leaders, Nixon set plans for the boycott.
The idea of the boycott had been floating around for months. Both Nixon and Robinson were waiting for a test cast to challenge the segregated bus policy in Court. They knew that they would have large support from black women who made up a majority of the bus users. The only thing missing was a good test candidate and respectable, middle-class Rosa Parks seemed perfect for the role.
On Friday December 2, Robinson created a flyer which she distributed to black families around Montgomery. The flyer told of the arrest of Parks and mentioned that 75% of the bus riders were blacks and if there was a boycott of the bus system then the city would be forced to pay attention to these customers. It then called for a boycott of the buses on Monday December 5th.
Robinson arranged a meeting with Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the ministers of two of the largest black churches in the city. While they hesitated at first, they ultimately agreed to participate and held a meeting at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King’s church, to plan the boycott. A new organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), was created to lead the boycott and Rev. King was appointed its president. It was also decided that the boycott should continue until the buses were no longer segregated. In order to get people around town during the boycott, the churches bought or rented cars and station wagons to transport people.
Meanwhile boycott supporters challenged the legality of bus segregation in court. Their case, Browder v. Gayle, was eventually heard by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled on November 13, 1956, in favor of the plaintiffs. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956, 381 days after it had begun. The buses in Montgomery were now integrated.
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Master and Commander is probably one of my favorite movies, because it’s just such a fantastic view of the workings and lives of a ship’s crew in that time period, and the only big budget production pretty much grounded in reality (I’m looking at you The Terror). I really love those stories that give you a “slice of life” about working men in another place and time; the little details about the routines and mechanics of their day to day lives. I always wanted to write a fantasy or sci fi story that had the same level of detail, something about the lives of “normal” people in an abnormal setting.
Anyways the whole reason I thought about this was because they brought up the Master and Commander series of books during one of the recent Chapo episodes, and were commenting on the barbarity of the child sailors, and I felt a little bit embarrassed that I had never realized how fucked up it was that there are kids in that movie. Like, not the movie’s fault, because that’s exactly how it was, but they definitely make it seem a little more romantic than it was: child soldiers and institutionalized trauma.
I love Master and Commander for all the same reasons. It’s just such a well put-together film.
Hollywood tends to have an issue with over-aging some of the characters in historical war films and such. Like, a lot of actors in World War II movies will be mid-20’s at the earliest, when in reality a lot of troops were only 17 or 18. The guys storming Normandy should look barely older than your local high schoolers. I appreciate Master and Commander for being one of the few historical military films that has a solid cast of child actors and uses them well. Really adds a lot, especially since the movie is trying to show such a grounded portrayal of British naval life.
Never seen it gotta add it to my watch list