A History of the Civil Rights Movement

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A History of the Civil Rights Movement

Early in the morning of December 2, 1955, Robinson and three helpers met at Alabama State College. They printed 52,000 flyers on the college’s mimeograph (copying) machine. The flyers told African Americans about Rosa Parks’s arrest, and that her trial was scheduled for Monday, December 5. “Please stay off all buses Monday,” read the flyers. WPC members posted flyers everywhere. The Sunday issue of the Montgomery Advertiser, a newspaper for the city’s African-American community, repro duced Robinson’s message on the front page. On December 5, Parks walked up the steps to the courthouse with E.D. Nixon, the head of the local NAACP chapter, and her lawyers Fred Gray and Charles Langford. About 500 supporters lined the steps as she passed. In court, the judge fined Parks $10 for disorderly conduct, plus $4 in court costs. That day, some 40,000 African Americans walked or found alternate ways to get to school or work. They refused to ride the Montgomery buses.

The bus boycott was so successful that local leaders decided to continue it. On the afternoon of December 5 a group called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed. They chose a Baptist minister who was new in town to lead the group: 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. That night, more than 5,000 African Americans crowded into the Holt Street Baptist Church to learn more about the boycott. Reverend King spoke to the crowd. ‘‘I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determi nation to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong,” he said. “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.’’

The front page of the Montgomery Advertiser from December 6, 1955, includes a story about the meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church.