Civil Rights Movement: The Montgomery City Bus Boycott

Historically, scholars have defined the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement with the arrest of Rosa Parks on the Montgomery City Bus Line on December 1, 1955. In doing so, the most important contribution of women in the movement simply and problematically culminated at the moment in which Rosa refused to give up her seat on that faithful day rather than acknowledging the very nuanced and very significant amount of work that women contributed in both the development and execution of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and subsequent instances throughout the Civil and Human Rights Movement. Hence, this essay seeks to engage the ways in which women were involved in the development of the various successes throughout the civil rights movement, particularly

This is especially true when one considers the fact that many of the the civil rights “giants” in Montgomery during that time like Dr. King were transplants from other black communities throughout the United States, not natives of the community. In reality, the Women’s Political Council paved the way for the entirety of the civil rights movement to occur as their courage, tenacity, and fearlessness actively countered the prevailing social order that blacks in Montgomery, Alabama and throughout the nation were an unfortunate participant of long before there was a national shift in public opinion on the topic of civil rights after the arrest of Rosa Parks and the emergence of the sit-in

Largely speaking, the Civil Rights Movement sit-in tactics gained popularity after February 1, 1960 when four students from North Carolina A&T sat in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Within weeks, following this action, sit-in campaigns had begun in nearly a dozen cities, most notably in cities like Nashville, Tennessse where there were large black populations shopping in segregated storefronts. In context of the sit-ins, it is important to recognize the contributions of women to this phase of the civil rights movement. The contribution of women can be seen in two contexts: First, in context of the lived realities that women mostly faced while shopping in these store fronts, and secondly, the very important contribution of individuals like Diane