Everybody Move to the Back of the Bus

            Segregation was something that really affected black life in America. On December 1, 1955, in the town of Montgomery, Alabama, blacks decided that they would try to change one of these things. They worked together and decided to boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted without being told to move back or stand up when a white entered the bus. This event caused a lot of problems for the local businesses and quite a stir in the national news. It may not have achieved everything the blacks really wanted, but it was a major stepping-stone on the path that would one day end racial segregation.
             It was 1955. In Montgomery, Alabama there was a law that required black citizens to ride in the back of its city buses. If a white person did not have a seat, a black person was required to give up their seat and stand. Blacks would have worse problems than this though. They would pay for their ride and walk around to enter the bus through the back, as they were supposed to, and the bus driver would drive away, leaving them behind. Blacks disliked the law that required them to sit in the back but very few would stand up for what they believed in, in fear of being arrested, or worse. Some wanted and change though and were willing to go for it. Jo Ann Robinson whom Martin Luther King, Jr. writes, "she, perhaps more than any other person, was active on every level of the protest."" She had run crying from a bus one day when she had been yelled at for accidentally sitting in the white only section. After this incident she tried to start a protest but was not backed by her Women's Political Council members. She then joined forces with E.D. Nixon (former head of the local NAACP) and others to bring an end to segregation on buses. Robinson wrote to Montgomery's mayor, W.A. Gayle. "Mayor Gayle, three quarters of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes If Negroes did not patronize them they could not possible operate there has been talk from 25 or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses.