382: Organizing for the Future -- A documentary film commemorating the Montgomery Bus Boycott

do [Music] so [Music] [Music] me [Music] hi my name is steven reed mayor of montgomery alabama introducing 382 organizing for the future a look at how today's leaders are taking notes and using the blueprint of yesterday's pioneers of the montgomery bus boycott please enjoy the film hello everyone it is truly an honor to help commemorate the 65th anniversary of the montgomery bus boycott considered the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the united states and i am clear that i am speaking to you as vice president-elect of the united states because of all that happened in montgomery in december of 1955 and the months that followed because of the courage resilience and fortitude of rosa mccauley parks because of the men and women who made the bus boycott possible domestic workers and members of civic and faith organizations who walked and carpooled during that tumultuous time because of the americans of all races faiths and backgrounds who rallied to the cause they together with us 26 year old leader the reverend dr martin luther king jr ignited a movement that continues to this day and we must honor them and all our ancestors not only with words but with deeds by carrying their work forward and doing all we can from changing laws to changing hearts to make our country more equal and more just i was in montgomery this past march and i had a chance to visit the national memorial for peace and justice and the legacy museum it was a powerful experience and a reminder that we need to reckon with our history honestly in order to move forward as a nation to those of you who took part in the bus boycott and those of you keeping its legacy alive today president-elect biden and i offer our profound gratitude and encouragement and we look forward to working with you and all americans to advance our ideals of equality justice and opportunity for all in the months and the years ahead in the words of congressman john lewis who was of course himself inspired by rosa parks and dr king and all the leaders in montgomery 65 years ago let us walk with the wind and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be our guide there is just so much hurt disappointment and oppression one can take the line between reason and madness grows thinner these are the words of rosa parks but rang true for so many in montgomery alabama in the jim crow south in 1954 passengers had to sit at the back of the bus in a section designated as colored if a white person got on the bus and there were no free seats the law said a black person would have to get up and let the white person sit down black citizens wanted to do something about this unfair practice joanne robinson an english professor at alabama state college and president of the women's political council met with city officials to complain one black riders had to stand even when there were empty seats in the white only section two there were too few bus stops in black neighborhoods and three black passengers had to pay their fares at the front of the bus get off and then get back on to sit at the rear city officials turned a deaf ear to these complaints joanne robinson warned the mayor that there was growing support for a community boycott of the bus system this warning would manifest the very next year on march 2nd 1955 claudette calvin a 15 year old girl was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on october 21st mary louise smith another teenager was arrested for the same reason as arrest and indignities grew the women's political council and the naacp also grew in strength and membership then on thursday december 1st 1955 rosa parks a well-respected woman trained in school desegregation at the highlander school was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man this was the moment when the people said enough joanne robinson and two students hastily mimeographed tens of thousands of flyers calling for a boycott of the buses the next monday they activated a support network to get the word out and dropped off bundles of flyers at stores bars factories barbershops and beauty parlors by friday afternoon word of the boycott spread to every black man woman and child on monday december 5th 1955 almost 90 percent of black people boycotted the buses in montgomery with that success joanne robinson approached martin luther king jr and ralph abernathy pastors of two of the largest black congregations in the city and asked for their support under dr king's leadership the montgomery improvement association was founded that night thousands of black citizens gathered for a mass meeting at the holt street baptist church and the mia decided to extend the boycott dr king said to the crowd we're going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city and we are not wrong if we are wrong the supreme court of this nation is wrong if we are wrong the constitution of the united states is wrong if we are wrong god almighty is wrong black leaders continue to reach out to city officials to demand fair treatment but officials attempted to enforce their will with harassment and arrest still black people did not get on the buses on february 1st 1956 right after the homes of martin luther king jr and ed nixon were bombed attorneys fred gray and charles langford filed a petition browder versus gail in federal district court arguing alabama law and montgomery city ordinances requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional in june the federal district court ruled in their favor this was the beginning of the end the case went on to the u.s supreme court and in november of 1956 the highest court in the land struck down racial segregation on buses their long battle was won at last when the supreme court's injunction to desegregate the buses was delivered to city officials on december 20th and on december 21st 382 days after it began the boycott was over the legacy of these brave and selfless people became the blueprint for the civil rights movement and until this day continues to push this nation toward economic equality and racial [Music] justice greetings and welcome to the 65th anniversary of the montgomery bus boycott 382 days of organizing for the future we have with us dr howard robinson professor at alabama state university and we also have mr lloyd howard a local businessman and member of the montgomery improvement association mr howard i'd like to start with you tell us what it was like growing up in montgomery during the time of the bus boycott montgomery was a different kind of city so growing up doing the boycott was exciting to us because we knew the players mrs parks worked right across the street from us her husband worked in the shop with us my brother and myself my brother ran the shop and mr parks was one of the bibles there so when the movement started we got right involved because we realized that you know it was something that was different it was exciting the person that made contact with us right from the start was e.d nixon he came down and asked the barbers and cab drivers and everybody to be ready for a bus boycott in that time in that short period from the first to the fifth they had organized the montgomery improvement association on the fifth morning of the fifth at dixon avenue church they started the meeting and then they moved to mount zion church that evening nobody knew at that time who was going to lead the movement because they had not selected a person to lead it they had some people there who was concerned about leadership because dr king wasn't about 26 years old at the last vote of who was going to lead they selected dr king i call it divine intervention when we got to the church whole street church that night the crowd was i mean you it was unbelievable you never seen anything like the people of church was full the backing is full of people standing on the outside and when dr king walked to the party when wilson introduced and walked to the podium about three minutes in his speech you knew that he was a what he was a one was nothing like it people were on their feet and shaking their hands and you know they were just thrilled over what he was saying to him because he was trying to convince black folk that they had the same rights of anybody else in the country and if you listen at his early speech that's what he kept saying and the monday night movement speech like you kept repeating it let folk know don't don't don't walk away this is important you know you we're gonna have to make sure that we boycott the bus dr robinson tell us a little bit about the organizing of the movement some of the events that led to the political organizing and how effective that organization was considering the climate that montgomery was at the time it's interesting because you have the bus boycott which is really a culmination in and of itself so on transportation public transportation in montgomery alabama there had been a long history of um clashes between the at first it was really the trolley so in the in the from the 1880s into the turn of the century you had trolley transportation in montgomery montgomery had one of the first the nation's first trolley systems and there was a two-year boycott of the black community of the trolley system to um to overcome segregated trolleys and and black people in montgomery were successful at that and really see this come to a crescendo in the 1950s um in 1946 some alabama state professor mary fairberg's english professor she is interested in joining the women's or the league of women's voters but she's the race does not allow for her membership at the same time she has an incident she's driving she's trying to get around the bus she almost hits a white woman the white woman is irate cusses um dr fairberg's out and then um mary fairburgs is arrested fine charged and and so she sees this as as unfair and so she goes to her church first baptist i mean dexter avenue baptist church and she hears her minister vernon johns deliver a sermon that really transforms her thinking and so she puts her anger into action she translates that that frustration into action and she forms what she calls the women's political council it's an organization of women who are going to address some of the ills and society in montgomery and they're going to um educate black people on the political process they they start to do voter registration literacy classes they start a program called youth city where they have mock elections for for the students black students at high schools it's really a dynamic organization but one of the issues that they are really dealing with is a bus issue and so there are a number of arrests in 1955 alone um mary louise smith's arrest arrested claudette colvin is arrested janet reese is arrested so then susie mcdowell mcdonald rather is arrested so there's a number of people arrested in just that year and so women's political council had thought about a bus boycott they started and they and they pushed for a bus boycott but they wanted to be able to collaborate with um edie nixon the labor organizer they wanted to be able to collaborate with with with the totality of the black leadership in montgomery and there was all they were also always told to hold on to hold back montgomery bus white cot was one of the most phenomenal and profound movement social action movements in america and even world history men black males left the organization the montgomery improvement association they were the key spokespersons they were the strategists but women in the origin of the movement in its evolution in his successful conclusion played extremely important roles in fact were not for women particularly working class women the montgomery west boycott would not have succeeded black women received the brunt of discrimination and the abuse that blacks overall received on local buses with white male drivers assaulting them they were very insensitive and decent to black women calling them all kind of names and they're arrested i had arrested black women who resisted uh their their commands so we mentioned uh the women's political council founded in 1949 by dr mary phil burks of alabama state university she was chair of the english department and she had an altercation with a policeman and a white woman on montgomery street that led her to found this organization that she called the women's political council now the next year 1950 joanne robinson also an english teacher at asu succeeded um burks as president of the women's political council and you see these black working-class women mainly bringing to the women's political council their concerns for how they were treated on buses so by 1954 and 55 robinson and the women's political council medical medical middle class women had um decided that going through the city council and city commission rather done nothing about the conditions on buses had decided up on the boycott they didn't know when who would be the person to stimulate the fellowship on that idea but they decided on a boycott so the night of rosa parks arrest rosa parks was arrested december 1st 1955 as a thursday evening on that evening about 12 o'clock in the evening jordan robinson and two of our students went into an asu building on campus and produced 50 000 flyers announcing one day boycott to take place on the day of rosa parks trial the next monday december 5th and these working-class women carry the boycott by walking for the boycott started walking to their destinations think about walking every day for 382 days in all kinds of weather now you are made these women are maids and and cooks and the like but they gave up their their welfare to take part in this event and and you know i read a story that a quote that said that there were no complaints you might have heard of this uh black woman her name was my mother pollard an old black woman was questioned by a reporter who asked mother pollard oh woman aren't you tired of walking and she said my feats is tired my soul is rested these same working-class black women attended in great numbers the barcodes mass meetings these were twice weekly meetings at local churches they were part strategy part informational part spiritual and you see these maze and these cooks coming from a hard day of work and a hard day walking to and fro through these mass meetings of local churches they and at the mass meetings they participated they asked questions and also black middle class women testified at two trials that took place during the boycott there was one trial in march 1956 where dr king was on trial for being one of about 90 leading blacks of the boycott so the city said who calls a boycott and violated a 1921 anti-state anti-boycott law and were arrested in february 1956 and you see a city calling these women black women not black men justify against skin one black woman they called was a middle-class black woman she was standing a glass then king leads you into boycotting he's your leader right and one person said we is our own leader but let me also mention two working-class women's groups that raised money for the boycott that was a club called the club from nowhere have you heard of georgia gilmore georgia gilmore was a working-class black woman and she wanted to raise money for the boycott and she organized a club called the club from nowhere they sold sandwiches and desserts and meals and they raised hundreds of dollars almost every week for the boycott bringing it to mass meetings there's another club called the friendly club organized by um georgia gilmore's rival anders rix also raised money by southern meals for the boycott so here are these women having to experience decades of injustice on city buses taking a position taking part in the boycott and there were enough for them agreeing to walk those days coming to the mass meetings making their voices heard making their voices heard in these two trials great great courage great strength on the part of both middle class women and working-class women that again were not for women altogether middle class and work class women the boycott would not have succeeded dr robinson walk us through the organization of the women's political council to the impetus of the mass meeting of you know what what were some of the key factors that played a role in the organization of the women's political council to the mobilization of those hundreds of people that gathered for the meeting you had a number of organizations that had been that have been collaborating over the course of a number of years it was an egregious situation on the buses the women um and and the leadership uh mary fairburks has her experiences on the buses joanne robinson who's the president of the women's political political council in 1955 she has her own um experience where she thought that the bus driver was going to punch her in the face um and she um as he approached her in a threatening way demanding that she move out of the section in the middle where blacks and whites could sit and and and threatened her with physical violence she ran off the bus and had to call someone to come pick her up so these these are the people who became the leaders of the women's political council there's about a hundred women centered at alabama state university but then there's two other branches of the women's political council in montgomery so it's about 300 black women and so when they mobilize they they are they are they send their tentacles throughout this throughout the city plus they mobilize alabama state students to help them distribute those those fires um and so um you have the women's political council sort of sparking the bus boycott and then the men step in and create the montgomery improvement association as we know the mass meetings played a major role in the success of the bus protest mr howard can you tell us a little bit about uh the mass meetings and uh you know how you know so many people were able to mobilize so quickly uh you know considering the i guess the insults that the people were receiving on the buses the mass meeting was impacted because people were kind of fed up with the way they're being treated because that that i mentioned to you before that was really egregious was you sitting on the bus white man got one white man get on the bus and he got six sisters to sit in and he they make you get out of your seat nobody sit in that seat you have to stand up over empty seat that you paid for so people were upset so when they called the mass meeting i think people just was ready to do something about what was happening because once you see that you know no matter where you're sitting on the bus you're upset because you you're sitting already in the colored area the bus driver get up and move this little piece back over your head and then tell you to get up and move back ain't nobody sitting in the seat that's what people would get angry about we had accepted segregation it was part of our everyday life when the movement started and those meetings monday night meetings most people came no matter what walk of life you were amazed cooks porters whoever you was you came to the meeting to see what's going to be done and after i guess the first second meeting you realize that this is a movement that might just do pretty good you know we everybody was a little bit leery from this dog because they thought that uh black folk probably wouldn't last over two or three weeks but once the movement started and dr king with that powerful voice letting you know you deserve the same rights of everybody else i think that at that point they got to be aware if you didn't get to the church area you weren't going to get a seat and so what happens with the mass meetings and i think is very interesting is that it they form what i think becomes part of the formula for the modern civil rights movement in that king brings to this formula um civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance the mass meeting brings marries the middle class leadership of the montgomery improvement association with the masses of people and so how do you know what to do you go to the mass meetings where do you get your energy and where you rejuvenated you know in the mass meeting where does the montgomery improvement association come back and tell the community what is happening with the with the bus boycott how negotiations are faring with the city and then seeking the community's input and permission to move forward that all is happening in the mass meetings and so initially they're once a week but they're so popular and so um voluminous that that people come they have to have two mass meetings a week and they're sharing them with you know at churches all throughout town and so the mass meeting brings together another element and it is steeped in a church so you have the the montgomery bus boycott is steeped in the church civil disobedience and non-violence mass mobilization and then of course with fred gray and his insistence on the lawsuit that formula is is going to be replicated a time and time again during the 1960s as as black people in the united states attacked the system of racial discrimination and segregation so what were some of the main means of communication because in order to sustain something for 381 days you know it has to be a significant strong current of accurate information being given how was that done most of it was direct information you have to remember wsfa wasn't but a year old you couldn't get one announcement at wsfa at that time the radio station was owned by white folk so from time to time the black program you would get a announcement but it wasn't like it's going all day but you had these information sheets that they would send out they would bring some downtown to where we were we put them in calves and we'd tell the guys and give them to folk in the community to put it that kind of information was spread it through word of mouth and to the sheets of paper that they had it was the next mass meeting who was going to be the guest speaker that night if the meeting was that monday that tuesday wednesday we would have the sheets showing people where they and that was very well done and we put in mailboxes everything you you had like young people like claudette calvin uh mary louise smith you know uh who got involved very early and who were at ground zero uh you know because the other two plaintiffs were of age but here you have young people were young people uh as ignited as the their seniors you know i wasn't but 15 years old well from that december i was 14 to 2015 in a january i had a group of folk that i knew that was involved because most of your information sheets that were given out we had to deliver to homes and wherever we would find black folk to let them know where the next man mass meeting was going to be not but a few of us living now but quite a few young people got involved you know because that was your source of transportation too you know if you were going from the north side or the west side of montgomery to alabama state you would catch the bus if you're coming from washington park area in that area you would catch a bus and because a lot of folk didn't have cars so if you were a young person it was exciting for you to hear that hey for the first time we're going to change this on the bus we're not going to have emphasis that we have to stand up so we got involved [Music] sometimes [Music] it feels cold [Music] it can be rough [Music] i know better days are coming you seem good you've seen me but just remember the better days [Music] they'll leave you all by yourself but don't cry cause better days [Music] [Applause] [Music] got to believe [Music] it's only [Music] but you gotta stay focused [Music] i [Music] [Applause] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] days how were whites organizing to or responding rather to the mobilization of black people the white south responded really initially to the brown versus board of education cases 1955. and so and you know sometimes you talk about conspiracy but this is a real conspiracy there are attorneys generals including including the attorney general from alabama who who meet in birmingham alabama and and try to work out ways to attack the the newly the newly um handed down brown versus board of education desegregation ruling and and they realize after brainstorming several days that they're not going to be able to overcome this this um supreme court decision and so they come away with the idea that they're going to oppose and delay at every turn and so what develops out of that is this idea of massive resistance that the white south is going to resist desegregation at every element or in every phase of of life and so the the park system has to be desegregated separately from a water fountain from the library all these entities have to be attacked and and adjudicated and dealt with individually and so the court case and the legal component is a critical element of that but um the the mass meeting um allows for the the montgomery improvement association to draw sustenance from the people towards support economic support to fight the litigations to to to provide a a car service a makeshift transportation network the montgomery improvement association wanted to get a um a license to have a transportation network a franchise they were denied by the city they wanted to start a um a banking system they were denied um the the proper permission so they were far thinking in their mobilization um and so and again it sets the template for for the modern civil rights movement the montgomery citizen council had organized in the same block where you have the mayor's office and the city council offices now yes sir that was the city it wasn't nothing on ripley street the whole the montgomery was small our business was in the same block i was running clear enough so when they had white mass meetings they had to put speakers on the outside because it would crowd out the auditorium so we could hear everything they were saying so we passed the information on to edie nixon whatever saying those guys what they had planned they started what they called the fight your campaign from that meeting one night and then white folk come out on the street you're talking about find your get rid of your name whoever you got working for you it scared a lot of black folk you know because they were working downtown some were working with white folks and that lasted for a little while but then you'd find out that they couldn't get rid of black folks with very very slave labor anyway you know white boy no white boy want to do that so that didn't go that far but you had signs in windows downtown montgomery about five year old the the white citizens council was a a way that white people who thought that they that the ku klux klan was too radical too violent and they wanted a more respectable way to do the same thing to to fight segregation to fight against efforts to eliminate discrimination and so the whites the white citizen council was a mississippi it was a phenomenon that grew out of mississippi and spread throughout the south but was was huge in in montgomery you had the city commissioners join the white citizens council you know to to to say that this is the side we're taking the side of segregation and white supremacy and so that's what um black people in montgomery face mr howard can you tell us a little bit about what was taking place you know just before uh the protest ended people assumed that uh you know the white power structure was caving in when in all actuality things were intensifying as you had as you had stated you had massive arrests taking place you had people getting fired and you had an increase in rhetoric from downtown from the mayor tell us a little bit about how things intensified before the order came down to end the segregation before the order came down and white folk was trying to put as much pressure on black folk as they possibly could but at that time black folk had bought into the movement well nothing's going to scam anymore black women and men saying well we're going to stay with dr king when he says over it'll be over but we're not going to let no white folk tell us when this movement is over they believed him in him they believed in what he was saying they were locked into the movement so there was no changes no changes you checked the buses the buses was empty after a while you realized that anybody who started talking about getting on the bus you get checked up from your own brother now man you don't want to do that we went to movement whether you were a street guy or a teacher whoever you were was no turning around at that point [Music] so i made a commitment while i was student at alabama state that black people had a problem in montgomery and it was a problem with segregation in general and particularly with the buses i didn't know anything about any lawyers but they told me that lawyers helped people to solve problems so i decided maybe in addition to being a preacher i'd be a lawyer i finished alabama state and may have 1951 enrolled in what was then western reserves university in cleveland finished law school in three years i left there and came to montgomery i am now ready to begin destroying everything segregated i could find when i returned to montgomery i already knew the key persons in montgomery who was interested in civil rights i knew mr e.d nixon who was then president of the montgomery branch of the naacp it was a problem carpool by profession i also knew about mrs rosa progs mrs was the secretary to the montgomery branch of the naacp she was interested in the same thing i was interested in and that is a doing away with segregation and discrimination from the time i opened my office in the latter part of september 1954 until mrs parks was arrested on december 1st 1955 almost four or five days a week during lunch hour miss parks would walk from her uh store to my office and we would have our lunch together and we would talk about conditions as they existed mrs sparks never told me that she was going to refuse to get up and give her a seat i knew i believe that if the opportunity ever presented itself that she wouldn't give up that seat i was out of town when i got back i found out she had been arrested got calls from her and said my case is set for monday at 8 30 and recall this quarter the city of montgomery and i want you to represent me i told i would i told her i said mrs prox don't worry about your case i'm gonna handle it i'll be back in touch with you between now and monday but if we're going to do something about the buses we need to do something so that we won't have this problem every two or three days so what i'm going to do when i leave here i'm going to go and talk to mr nixon he got you out of jail he knows everything i know joanne robinson is interested in getting the community involved in trying to keep people off of the buses until they can go back on a non-discriminatory basis our people stayed off of the buses and one of the reasons they stayed off of the buses is e.d nixon did something that if he had asked any of us to do we probably would have told him not to do we were trying to keep we wanted black people to know to stay off the buses we didn't want white people to know what we were doing edie nixon had a friend a newspaper reporter at the advertiser that he could trust he called that reporter and told him what we black folks were planning on doing on monday so instead of it being a secret sunday morning because it couldn't have been a secret because all these preachers were talking about what they were going to do but it was the headlines in the montgomery advertiser on sunday that black folks planned to stay off of the buses on monday one of the best things ever happened to us because a lot of folks who didn't know about it it then became a news item and so those folks who didn't know knew and they stayed off of the buses it just happened during the course of this event that we had these bummings including the bombing of dr king's house we concluded that now is a good time to file the case of brawler versus gail but i had to be sure that they were the right persons i wanted claudette carvin's case and i wanted to call that to be one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit so i contacted her parents and they agreed in addition to that the community had brought mary louise smith who had been arrested some time later and i had talked to her and i had approved her and then there was miss susie mcdonald who was a retired teacher she was rather old aged but she was a good person but then mrs aurelia browder who was just the right age very articulate one i thought would serve good as a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit so i named her as the lead plaintiff and so we then had these four persons a total of five who became plaintiffs and browder versus gail that case was filed in the federal district court in montgomery so we filed the suit it was assigned to the judges we got a hearing and ultimately we got a decision in that case before summer in 1956 and ultimately the supreme court uh uh granted our motion to affirm the decision of the law court which means that what started out to be a one-day protest developed into steering off of the buses for 382 days a little more than a year [Music] so when the order came down okay where were you what was what was it like uh in the city uh when uh the the news uh was reached that there was no longer a need for a boycott um you know what what did king uh say to the people that uh encouraged them to save for the moment i think we had heard that day that that was the order was down we didn't know what it was but we heard from some people that the audit come down and it was going to be in favor of the protests that the bus boycott but that night i didn't go to the mass meeting that night because we knew it was going to happen but when people left they were excited because they realized at that point that they had won you know the bus boycott was over one and i think dr king got back on the bus and rode the bus through the city and let people know it was time to get back to the bus but one caviar the young people were celebrating too much and dr king told us you're gonna have to come down the second phase of the movement is gonna be much more challenging than the busboy and you know we started to think about what he was talking about because we were focusing on the bus boycott but at that point you know he already had in his toolbox was to launch counters get bus drivers all the things that he had integrated schools and all of that you know so once he explained it to the black community that the next phase was going to get started and started soon you know we were excited about it so dr robinson uh looking at the i guess the the evolution of king you know as a as a leader from coming to montgomery to do work on his doctoral dissertation to becoming pastor at what is now dexter king memorial avenue baptist church to being the president of the montgomery improvement association talk a little bit about the role that that boycott played in maturing african americans nationwide in civil disobedience and protests during the bus boycott really the the people who embraced this idea of nonviolent civil disobedience and there was a there was a community of people pacifists other people in different parts of the nation who wanted to see a movement like what was happening in um in montgomery they started reaching out and king started to get visitors to montgomery and they and they started to talk to him about you know the the theoretical and the philosophical underpinnings of non-violent civil disobedience and they they expanded his his understanding of of the of the phenomenon and the approach and strategy and they realized that what was happening in montgomery could be applicable to the south in general and so they were thinking about replicating the montgomery experience throughout this nation but particularly throughout the south the montgomery improvement association and king as its leader really was a was a uh an audition for the the coming direct action phase of the montgomery bus boycott and so there was a number of non-violent workshops that started to take place in montgomery these non-violent oil pacifist luminaries from all over the nation would start to come students were participating um folks from the community were participating and they started to hammer out the idea of taking the montgomery experience and applying it region-wide what grows out of the montgomery bus boycott with again mirroring the montgomery improvement association is the southern christian leadership conference and its mission is really to to replicate what the montgomery improvement association did in montgomery to replicate that throughout the south and so there is a saying structure you know really a lot of the people who were in the montgomery improvement association reverend solomon say ralph abernathy all these folks are going to become the founding members of the southern christian leadership conference and they're going to stay with that organization and grow that organization and so king cuts his teeth in montgomery as the leader of the civil rights movement here in montgomery it's a jumping off point a catalyst to his his becoming the leader of the civil rights movement in the nation and really recognized around the world as a as a civil rights luminary and and leader that had its origins here in montgomery and so that's why i say the montgomery improvement association sets the template for the modern civil rights movement because the direct action phase which is so incredibly productive is is possible because it applies the lessons that king learned here in montgomery mr howard last question uh what do you think we need to know uh about the boycott that is the most important to you having experienced it what lesson do we need to get from it uh what do we need to emphasize and what will at least satisfy you that we have touched on the major theme of the movement you know we talk about the montgomery bus boycott and the impact and it did have impact you know for changing the way people felt about the city and the activities that he had but the greatest impact for the movement is that for the first time it forced black folk together they changed the way they looked at each other there was a brotherhood sisterhood that was not present before the movement and i think that impact probably went through the nation greater than anything else we had a friend stoker carmichael used to come to town and he used to say to us he said you know you guys gonna get killed here you can't stay in this movement without losing your life and he's always saying to us think you don't think you all need to move and we would sell those still still said look man we can't move there's too many people here who depend on the kind of relationship that we build with young people and trying to create that brotherhood sisterhood and we have a large family so we could move so that kind of relationship lasted and it's still lasting to now to watch montgomery go from a solid white city to a black city where you got a black male black police chief black sheriff it almost to the point where i get emotional yeah sometimes i arrived alone some days i didn't think i would live that long i just didn't think i could have that long to see that much change for a city to go to solid hardcore mean-spirited white till now in just about every aspect of this city and county you got a black person in charge so that probably is the most impact and it works relationship work between each other there's no in-fight in there it might have some decisions that are different from others but it works yeah and that's exciting really exciting we went from 10 in the fields from dawn till night to march in arm and arm for our civil rights and no one said it was going to be easy along the way it's been a lot of pain and struggle like the sunday morning we were forced to shift through the rubble of 16th street baptist church yes that still hurts the way we lost those four little girls to that bomb thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth and since bertha always wondered why we had to be separated just to ride a bus or be fed when if you cut a white and black man we both bleed red it makes no sense to me but see that was history thanks to the heroic endeavors of leaders like martin luther king and mega evers the late nights of hose pipes and dog bites are a thing of the past and the last we're free at last and i do thank god almighty we're free at last i do have to ask now what's holding black back as we head to the future why is it that it's more news stories of our violence than our achievements the way media perceives us as troublemakers instead of innovators like gary morgan or george washington carver you see my brothers and sisters we have to work harder because the odds are still stacked against us and it's a must you trust my words when i say if you don't let your potential turn kinetic there will be a time you do regret it so get up move step off into your purpose and network if need be and see the year-long bus boycott of the march for settlement of montgomery and happened to step at a time a day at a time from brothers and sisters that came together for the same call so what's yours and we're continuing our discussion on the 382 days of organizing for the future we have with us two emerging leaders in social justice kenisha brown and dylan nettles and we're going to be talking about the relationship between the montgomery bus boycott and current social justice issues we'll begin with uh miss brown does the montgomery bus boycott motivate young people today to take a stand against social injustice oh most definitely i'm a native here in montgomery and growing up i've heard stories all the time through my grandmother and other relatives of what they endured and what happened when a montgomery bus boycott and even though we did not learn the ins and outs of the boycott in our schooling we still had our neighbors in our village to kind of tell us what's going on in present day and i think one thing that we are learning from the boycott is pretty much resiliency in terms of just kind of staying the stay in the course keeping focus and understanding that things don't happen overnight it takes you know a lot of organizing um to strategize to make things you know go into fruition and i think that we kind of hold that into present day and you've seen different other movements in present day um and not really in terms of a boycott but what we're seeing what happened with black lives matter when to start with trayvon martin um even going now to 2020 with george floyd and brianna taylor we're not just and when i'm saying we i'm just seeing people around the country they're not just going to the streets in one day and then going home the next day what they're doing is applying pressure day in day out around the clock to see change so most definitely we're using what we got from the boycott to present day mr nettles how how does the boycott play a role in policymaking today what have you as a as a young advocate learned that impacts well the truth is the boycott gave us the blueprint and those are the same tools and the same tactics that we continue to use and employ today and when i think about you know as a policy analyst as a policy strategist the work that i'm doing is so much focused on knowing the demands you know understanding my targets understanding the issues and so what i learned from the boycott was they understood the history they understood what it took to even get to the point where they were able to really create and build this movement right but they also remain really steadfast and committed and focused frankly on who exactly the targets were and who exactly were the people that they had to implore those demands towards they understood power and i think that even today we still look at as kenisha pointed out as we practice civil disobedience as we practice non-violent protests we have to be so clear about our demands about the policy changes that we want to see and we have to be really incisive about what those policies have to look like in order to move us forward as a community and so the truth is this has given us the blueprint and we didn't have to reinvent the will we continue to employ those same tactics today because we knew that they worked as a young organizer in montgomery today i understand that we have a responsibility to carry the legacy of those who came before us this was the very place where it gave us not just a moment it gave us the rest of our history the rest of even today to um to really continue this fight towards racial justice and equity just as they were then so miss brown you being a voting rights advocate and a community organizer do you find a lot of people identifying with the struggles of the past and do you find yourself having to remind or encourage people you know that what's going on now is a continuation of the past what's your relationship with the i look at it both ways um when we're out in neighborhoods talking to different people um you have to consider the different walks of life and age differences and whatnot you have some that remember you know the montgomery boy the montgomery bus boycott vividly because it was 65 years ago my mother is 62 years old and even though it was you know three years before she came into life those stories still continue so you have some that correlate what happened during the boycott and still saying that some of those injustices are still going on today then you have some who are not directly connected to that type of struggle so they're a little removed from it and they may be a little apathetic about it i have a lot of apathy about it or whatnot but it's just more so of them not i wouldn't say because they don't care it's just that they can't really relate to it so what we try to do we just have those conversations and just kind of have issue related discussions with them to where they can see that correlation although we have accomplished a lot from the boycott and we have accomplished a lot over the years with the voting rights act and other things we still have had some setbacks even though with the voter rights 1965 of course that was gutter i mean gutted with shelbyville holder and we're still dealing with that even now here in 2020 where we saw a lot of things pushed back even during the covet pandemic where we would think that things would be made easier for people to vote but we still had a lot of obstacles in play looking at it two-fold still have a long way to go but we are seeing some you know some stepping points and then we have to just make sure that the messaging is connected to some of the present-day people today aurelia browder is my great aunt she married into the browder family i learned more about her through her son butler browder who's still living here in montgomery alabama when i talk to him about her he always talks about the fact that she was an entrepreneur during the time of the montgomery bus boycott she was a doula she owned several vehicles she was a seamstress there were so many facets to this woman i wanted to continue to tell her story about the resiliency the hope the love the perseverance that she displayed as an unsung hero of the civil rights movement a couple of years ago there was to be an erection of richard montgomery general richard montgomery in the heart of downtown montgomery alabama slave owner and i thought to myself why are we not trying to combat this why aren't we not standing up and i said aurelia would be very upset with me if i didn't say something about this she's always there with me in terms of when i you know do what i do as it relates to tours or just talking to young people and then the browder versus gail to know that she wasn't scared she had the the guts to be the lead plaintiff to tell her story so now that people are are starting to get more and more engaged in montgomery we're doing it through art you know we're painting murals that speak to the issues you have to stand up when the time is right you have to speak truth to power and so now there's a group of young people like uh america and you know kadida young women valerie adams who are willing to now say it's okay to speak truth to power and so i'm happy to be amongst young folk coming up behind us and stirring the pot if you will my name is tori jackson my name is valerie adams we represent the alabama indigenous coalition i'm oglala lakota from south dakota i'm black native american and i'm a descendant of the muskogee nation there is a major lack of education throughout the state of alabama as far as indigenous people go there's a lack of acknowledgement of indigenous people in alabama so i think that when you look back at the boss boycott and what was happening in the very beginning of civil rights and all that voting native americans we didn't have access to all that you know we were living on different reservations and fighting to survive my my family was just trying to trying to blend in because i mean another thing that people aren't didn't think about was yeah they were mixed and they they did have you know native american heritage but they were still colored so they were still drinking out of the colored water fountains and you know they were still having to sit on the back of the bus there was no difference it was it was either you were you were white or you were colored we're living in these parallel universes where you know you have black liberation and then you also have tribal sovereignty there's a commonality between african and native and it's interesting being from this this perspective and having both of them it we're fighting for the same common goal which is to reclaim ourselves in unfortunately a world of whitewashing we all are part of a community organization called southerners on new ground song so our work is a community involvement act organization the mission is to heighten the voices of black people indigenous people lgbt community and basically just surround their issues and making sure that they are heard and they have a voice in the community um for me personally i don't think people just wake up and decide to be activists i think there are things that happen in your life to just push you into that space and something that happened for me was me advocating on my father's but i have to get him out of jail so um i had to realize like in that moment um i didn't have anybody to speak up for me i had to speak up for myself and i know what it feels like to be isolated when you when you have nobody to speak up for so i just kind of took it upon myself to start speaking up for other people i agree with kadeta it wasn't uh i just woke up and felt like i wanted to you know just do this it kind of just happened i returned home from serving the military retired got back and i saw my community at a standstill and probably just kind of just ghosting away and i felt like something needed to happen and so i just stepped up because i saw no one else was doing it or maybe they were doing it and couldn't and needed a budge or like a little push so i decided to jump out and do what i knew how to do best which was speak out say something and just you know make some everyday noise about what was wrong with the area and bring in some solutions right and i didn't seek out to be an activist either i think um in the words the late great john lewis we have a more obligation to do what's right get into good trouble necessary trouble and when you see something that isn't right is your obligation to say something and do something about it and to continue his legacy that's what inspired me inspired me throughout to be an activist in the eyes of the 65th voice bus boycott i don't think we ever left um the boys bus boycott i think it only evolved what we've seen is um racism being hid and racism being covered up and the efforts that current activists are continuing with that were happening back in 1955 are similar efforts like i said it never really stopped there even though we were able to make strides our strides are not great enough we're still being oppressed we're still seeing racism all around us it comes down to systematic racism at this point we have racism and politics we have racism in your workplace we have racism in schools so it never end ended at the bus boycott even though you know they made their size there it only evolved to this point i don't think there isn't any game i think that's what they want it to be at any game um we're going to we're not letting up we want to send a direct message that that's done those days are over we will fight for our children just like our ancestors fought for our rights to vote now it's our job to continue that movement and we're going to fight for our children to have proper education a quality education equitable lives and to have their children have that same thing mr nettles with the you know the rise of social protests uh you know in wake of various uh murders and various scenes of injustice by police officers and you know by citizens upon other citizens how can we teach boycott history to uh assist in the creation of policy because a lot of people you know they'll do the protests but when it comes time to policy the numbers kind of dwindle off tell us a little bit about that and your struggles as a director of policy for alabama aclu political education is really the fuel that is behind every movement and that's what they did so well during the bus boycott is they educated the public on what really this meant for us how in terms of being connected to the work to the movement everyone had a role to play and i think that's really what we are trying to still do today we have so many more creative and new tools and and options about how to go about that but the truth is is that it's still as i was saying before the same rooted in the same practice political education fuels the type of policy strategies that we come up with it fuels the decision-making about who and where we should be showing up and practicing civil disobedience right and so i think that it just goes back to us really investing and knowing that that is really the catalyst before everything else that happens it's starting and rooting ourselves in our history and the education about what we are actually trying to achieve so ms brown do you think that today's young people are willing to uh sacrifice to the same extent that those people were doing the uh the bus boycott do you see that devotional um and we saw it actually this year um just in casual conversations i've had with um a few of my friends i think dylan we've talked about it um we kind of joked about it where we said generation z is going to be the one to save us all because they're the ones right now and they remind me a lot of the boomer generation and when i say they remind me of the boomer generation is that they're so pragmatic they sit and they kind of you know read the room so to speak um they're looking at the issues that are happening and they're sitting down and they're organizing around it and they're making sure that they organize consistently around it and kind of what we're seeing right now what happened with you know the protests from bianna taylor and george floyd even though the profile has kind of died down in terms of media or whatever you still have people that are right there in louisville still organizing still protesting a lot of those are younger people that are organizing and it kind of goes back to dr king speak dr king was 26 right and listening to different kind of movements that have happened over the years it started at the root of young people so that's still continuing right now so as far as sustained efforts how does let's say a a social protest today how does that help you uh in the policy area you know what's the relationship between the boots on the ground uh and the you know the policy making that takes place in the legislature in congress or you know at a corporate boardroom you know what's the relationship what they did so well about the boycott and what i i really want us to really work hard and continue to strive to do today is they built coalitions right and what we have to do today if we're going to really make policy change if we're going to really move things in the alabama legislature and this even in the in the city council you know at whatever level of government we have to have coalitions behind what we ultimately want to see we have to have united fronts intersectional fronts of individuals of organizations coming together who are very focused on the goal right and so those boots on the ground outside the state house at the capitol outside of city hall wherever they may be send a strong message to the decision makers to the lawmakers that there's a coalition of people who are not going to be moved until they reach their goal right this is much stronger signal than me being out there by myself or me as a policy director going and trying to make deals trying to lobby right when the people are out there when they're on the side of justice of equity then there really is no stopping that momentum and they know that and so when there's real lives out there who are being impacted and they're centered in the work then they have to take those voices seriously and all that i can do is be a conduit from the people who are out there boots on the ground to the decision makers to say you've got a lot of people out here waiting on answers and so where are they dylan can you tell us a little about a little bit about some of the current policy issues that are emerging that require immediate attention well i think the issue at the forefront really is the way that mass incarceration continues to show up and divide and really disproportionately impact the black community in alabama we represent what about 26 percent of the state population we are 52 of the population of people in custody and alabama department of corrections today there's obviously a huge disparity there and a lot of that has to it starts with policing our our community is being overpoliced but it goes right into sentencing where we are being more harshly sentenced we know alabama's habitual felony offender law essentially a three strikes law is one of the harshest in the country and then we see people who are incarcerated facing what are unconstitutional conditions the u.s department of justice has just in the last two years identified multiple human rights violations at the hands of correctional officers at the hands of of staff who are supposed to be responsible for the well-being of our people of our community ultimately in hopes that we're coming back home and the truth is that we're spending lengthy sentences divided from our families it hurts our local businesses our economy within our community our ability to sustain wealth within our community to own homes all of these are issues that continue today to disproportionately impact the black community and alabama has one of the worst worst records on this in the country khanisha as far as uh you're a voting advocate as far as voting is concerned what emerging issues do you see with voting the good thing about this past election that we had on november 3rd was that turnout was probably one of the highest we've seen in any election cycle for a while and i know a lot of us were kind of applauding and getting emotional about the long lines that we saw not only that was happening across the united states but here in alabama but at the same time we can't normalize that because that is an issue where someone has to wait in line for hours to vote perfect example and i can tie it in with my mom my mom went to vote absentee in person at the courthouse and she waited four and a half hours to cast her vote in the pouring rain that's something that i wouldn't imagine that would happen here you know in 2020. so in dealing with that a lot of other stuff that we saw during this election cycle was that our absentee voting system is cumbersome we need to have no excuse absentee voting here and even when we were selecting the option to vote absentee because of covet the wording on the application and the ballot were two different things the wordings were different and a lot of people were hesitant in selecting that option because they kind of felt that they were lying um to vote absentee because it's not saying that you don't want to vote because you're in fear of getting covet is because you have a physical affirmative illness some people were healthy and fine they were just fearful of going to vote due to the pandemic and what another thing that it brought to was that alabama is in critical need of having early voting we saw in places in houston where houston had their i think it was their fedex center that was open 24 hours for people to go vote at any time we just don't have that here in alabama so i hope that conversation carries on into our legislative session to probably have those type of options available here for people to vote and of course voter id requirements things like that that hinder black people and poor people to vote we need to get rid of that here in alabama if i could mention this to dr white i think one of the things that i quickly learned i've grown up in alabama but one of the things i quickly learned coming to montgomery and really beginning my work as an organizer was that they understood their power when they were organizing the boycott i think what also happened right as a side effect if you will is right like the rest of the world to our power too right and it feels like ever since then we've been fighting and trying to grasp to hold on to all the gains that we're able to make from the boycott through the movement and today it feels like especially this year right like we are so much back into that kind of hostile ground of trying to hold on and to continuously fight for all of these achievements or all these gains that we made but they also know they knew that by gutting the voting rights act what that would do they know by continuing to put um you know a disproportionate amount of black men particularly into jail cells what that does to diminish our collective power and the action that we can do and bring together and in closing one of the consistencies that i see regarding the legacy of resistance is the unwillingness to abandon those who are the least of these or those who are the most vulnerable and if we begin even with the resistance of slavery to the resistance of african americans at the early part of the 20th century even in montgomery to the 1950s with the emergence of the women's political council the montgomery improvement association the southern christian leadership conference the lowndes county freedom organization the black panther party for self-defense even into the african independence movement there is a legacy of resistance to oppression that permeates amongst african and african-american people and the bus boycott actually brought that to light it was a coming out of a spirit that had existed before but culminated in montgomery alabama to bring to the world a new ethos of dealing with human being and the nature of existence [Music] hi i'm steven reed mayor of montgomery alabama i want to thank all of our partners for helping make tonight possible thank you for your involvement to make the last few days become a reality we really appreciate your contributions and we're really excited about all the engagement that we've gotten from everyone throughout the community but we want to let you know tonight is not the end check out mgmbusboycott.com for a list of more events that will be going on and over the next 382 days stay engaged as we'll be bringing more events to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the montgomery bus boycott thanks again you

Channel: City of Montgomery Alabama

Views: 7,814

Keywords: mgmbusboycott, montgomery, alabama, boycott, montgomerybusboycott, cityofmgm, mymgm, ourmgm, kharicreative, wkmedia, kalonji gilchrist, ouida washington, mayor steven reed, rosa parks, montgomery bus boycott, kamala harris, vice president kamala harris, vice president-elect

Id: FZw-PNuOMmk

Length: 88min 24sec (5304 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020