DIRECTIONS: Read the assignment prompt. Use the material in the right pane to review the sources and your answers from the Inquiry page, by selecting a source and then using the tabs. Compose your answer in the box on the left. Use the email form to send your answer to your instructor.
ASSIGNMENT: Some books say something like this: "Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White man. African Americans heard this and decided to boycott the buses." But this is a brief description of a complex event. Write a more complete answer to the question: Why did the boycott of Montgomery’s buses succeed?
Use the documents and your background knowledge to support your ideas. Include specific examples and quotes.
COMPOSE ESSAY ANSWER:
REVIEW THE NOTEBOOK:
Letter from Robinson to the Mayor
In this letter, Jo Ann Robinson writes the Mayor of Montgomery asking for fair treatment on the buses.
Honorable Mayor W. Gayle
City Hall
Montgomery, Alabama
Dear Sir:
The Women’s Political Council is very grateful to you and the City Commissioners for the hearing you allowed our representative during the month of March, 1954, when the "city-bus-fare-increase case" was being reviewed. There were several things the Council asked for:
1. A city law that would make it possible for Negroes to sit from back toward front, and whites from front toward back until all the seats are taken.
2. That Negroes not be asked or forced to pay fare at front and go to the rear of the bus to enter.
3. That busses stop at every corner in residential sections occupied by Negroes as they do in communities where whites reside.
We are happy to report that busses have begun stopping at more corners now in some sections where Negroes live than previously. However, the same practices in seating and boarding the bus continue.
Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate.
More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers.
There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of busses. We, sir, do not feel that forceful measures are necessary in bargaining for a convenience which is right for all bus passengers....
Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses. We do not want this.
Respectfully yours,
The Women’s Political Council
Jo Ann Robinson, President