Civil Liberties and Rights: Civil Rights

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

A year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the focus of the civil rights campaign shifted to Montgomery, Alabama. View the following galleria to learn about the bus boycott in that city.

In December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. City ordinance required African Americans to relinquish their seats to whites when the bus became crowded. The police arrested Parks, a member of the NAACP, and threw her in jail.

Montgomery's black community responded by organizing a boycott of the city's busses. African Americans carpooled or walked instead of using public transportation. While some whites in Montgomery supported the campaign by driving blacks to work, others used violence or legal methods (e.g. refusing to sell car insurance to African Americans) to try to thwart the boycott.
Among the organizers of the campaign was a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. A proponent of Mahatma Gandhi's theories of resistance, King worked to ensure the boycotters remained nonviolent. To do otherwise would have allowed the police to use force to crush the movement.
In November 1956, the Supreme Court declared that segregation in public transportation unconstitutional. City leaders ignored the ruling. But shortly thereafter, the economic toll of the boycott forced them to give in and desegregate their buses.
The Montgomery boycott made national headlines. The victory provided a major boost to the growing civil rights campaign. King gained prominence as one of the movement's most important leaders. He and other black clergymen formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to mobilize black churches into the crusade for racial justice.

In 1957, a watered down civil rights bill was passed, but it was weak and voting rates among African Americans remained below twenty percent. In 1964, after much arm twisting and a lengthy filibuster, Congress passed a comprehensive civil rights bill.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was actually a stronger measure than the bill proposed by either party, primarily because it had significant enforcement mechanisms. Johnson quipped to an aid that the Democrats would face a backlash against their party that would lose them elections for the next generation. The legislation included the following provisions:

Banned racial discrimination in all public accommodations (e.g., restaurants, hotels, theaters, stores, etc.).
Required the federal government to cease funding of any state or local program that had discriminatory policies.
Authorized the Justice Department to file lawsuits to enforce school desegregation.
Created the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to force businesses and labor unions to comply with anti-discrimination laws.

Journal:1964 Civil Rights Act 10 points

Explore these links and then answer the journal questions.

Journal Questions:

What were the influences that led to passage of civil rights laws? What factors resulted in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Please enter your entry to The 1964 Civil Rights Act Journal on the journal worksheet for this section. For information on how this assignment will be graded, please visit the Orientation.