If it wasn’t for him Rosa Parks would have spent a night in jail and her name would be among the long list of forgotten Blacks who refused to give up their seats on the bus who was either kicked off or arrested for breaking the law. And Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, would have pursued his goal of becoming a great preacher, who one day would succeed his father as the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. If not for him, there would have been no Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet his name is never mentioned when it comes to Civil Rights pioneers.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott kicked off the national Civil Rights Movement that propelled Dr. King into the national limelight as one of the greatest leaders in this country’s history. And Parks is looked upon as its symbol. The boycott was urged, planned and organized by the city’s NAACP President E. D. Nixon who decided that Rosa Parks was the right person to challenge the law and he handpicked Rev. King as the leader.
On Dec. 1, 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a White man. This was not the first time this had happened. Many Blacks had challenged this law by refusing to give up their seat, but they were either kicked off the bus or arrested. The local NAACP had been planning to challenge this law for a while but had not found the right person to back. So when Parks, a highly respected person in the community who also worked with the youth program of the NAACP, was arrested Nixon decided the time was right.
After bailing Parks out of jail he convinced her to challenge the law. After talking to her family she agreed. Nixon then planned a community meeting in which he outlined the plans and goals. However, he could not attend the initial meeting because of a previous commitment, changes were made. Because he wasn’t there the older ministers watered down the plans. After hearing this angry Nixon challenged the ministers, at what Parks, described as one of the largest meeting ever. He called them a bunch of cowards, which offended Rev. King. When it came time for the infuriated King to speak, he addressed Nixon’s challenge and everyone else declaring that he was not a coward and agreed to lead the boycott.
Nixon chose King because he was young, 25, a great speaker and new to the community, having just taken over Dexter Baptist Church, so he didn’t have all the attachments the older ministers had. He had little to lose.
Parks later stated that what they expected to be a small meeting in the church, ended up being so many people that the church overflowed into the parking lots around it.
The 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott would forever change the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, as it did the entire country, as far as racial segregation and the Jim Crow system of separating Blacks from Whites.
The boycott, which most thought was going to be short, lasted a little more than a year, over 380 days, and the situation became so tense that King’s house was bombed. King along with many others, including Nixon, was arrested during this campaign to strike fear in the residents to force them to stop the boycott but it didn’t. The boycott didn’t conclude until a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gaylended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.
Under the Jim Crow law Blacks had to set in the back and Whites up front. After Blacks paid the driver, they had to get off the bus and re-enter from the rear side door because they couldn’t walk through the White section. Adding to the insult was when the White section filled Blacks had to get up and give their seats to White passengers. So there were Black women having to stand for White men. That was the law. Many Blacks throughout the South, not just Montgomery, (Montgomery wasn’t the only Southern city that had these laws) refused to give up their seats, but they were either kicked off the bus or arrested if they refused to get off.
Nixon and other leaders in Montgomery were tired of this system and were ready to challenge it, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and were arrested, they jumped on it. They knew that if they could defeat this law all the other Jim Crow laws would fall.
Despite fierce political opposition, police coercion, personal threats and their own sacrifices, the Blacks of Montgomery held the boycott. They walked to work and for groceries, the people with cars gave others rides to work and the grocery stores, and they formed car pools. A few Whites participated in the car pools, some because they were against segregation, and others because they needed their domestic workers. Bus ridership plummeted as Blacks were the majority of the riders in the system, and the bus company was on the verge of financial ruin as a result of the boycott. In late January a bomb was set off near the home of Rev. King and on Feb. 1, 1956, a bomb exploded in front of Nixon’s home.
On June 5, 1956, a three-judge panel of the US District Court determined that Montgomery’s segregation law was unconstitutional, violating the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.. On Nov. 13, 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. On Dec. 17, 1956 the Supreme Court rejected appeals by the city and state to reconsider its decision.
Not much was heard from Nixon on the national level after the bus boycott victory even though he remained active in Montgomery in the fight against racism. Even though Rev. King always gave Nixon credit for the bus boycott, he never made him a part of his inner circle of leaders after leaving Montgomery to take the fight national. Nor did the NAACP advance Nixon to a state or national position.
Parks became a figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement while King’s role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the Civil Rights Movement in the world. Yet none of this would have occurred without E. D. Nixon.