To fight back against being labeled a "communist," organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) criticized the United States government through a series of editorials and articles, public speeches, and congressional hearings that would be heard internationally.
December 1, 1955 marks a day that played a role in the shape of the modern Civil Rights Movement. On this day, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white gentleman. She was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for not giving up her seat. Parks told the police "They [two policemen] asked if the driver had asked me to stand up, and I said yes, and they wanted to know why I didn't. I told them I didn't think I should have to stand up. After I had paid my fare and occupied a seat, I didn't think I should have to give it up."1 E.D. Nixon, an officer with the all-black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and local head of the NAACP, bailed her out of jail and the black community followed her. .
The black citizens wanted to sit wherever they wanted, and they were going to do this by boycotting the Montgomery Bus Line. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was created to coordinate the Montgomery Bus Boycott. E. D. Nixon asked Martin Luther King Jr. to be the MIA's president and lead the protest with Jo Ann Robinson. Robinson was a professor at the all-black Alabama State College, and a member of the Women's Political Council (WPA). At a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church, King delivered a speech that set the guidelines for the boycott and the definition of what civil rights would mean. He said "When the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say, "There lived a race of people, black people, fleecy locks and black complexion, people who had moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization.
