In this confused world, where a few white supremacists, operating in a backdrop of the market economy that is based on exploitation, where there is public production and private expropriation/profiting; where the rights of people are denied, based on gender, race, religion and gender preference; where people are discriminated against because of their age. The Spook wants to offer a short story about an era where public accommodations were used to force second class citizenship on a numerically dominant population. These people decided to use an ingenious and very effective tool to confront this exercise in white supremacy. I am talking about the boycott. A boycott is to abstain, from using, buying, or dealing with, as a means of protest, the ultimate goal being to impact the bottom line of the oppressor and/or his friends. Boycotting has been used hundreds of times and has been extremely successful. I am putting this forward as a possible tool to deal with the institutional problems of the fire department and the union, to crack the jaws of racism! This seemed particularly appropriate since today, December 1st, is the 53rd anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. And today, like then, a few uneducated white men, are pushing a maniacal idea of racism on blacks and other minorities and including other white people; when even the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of this country, has proven that that idea has outlived its usefulness, and should be relegated to the dung heap of bad ideas like sun revolving around the earth, or the earth is flat, or Columbus discovered something. – The Spook
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The story you are about to read is about what happened when a community of people say, “Enough.” Enough unfairness. Enough segregation. Enough and no more. It’s a story of how a community’s courage and determination can rob the bee of its sting.

No Way to Start a Vacation – Chapter 1
A chilly winter wind was howling around Mrs. Jo Ann Robinson’s car. It was the day before Christmas 1949, in Montgomery, Alabama. Mrs. Robinson was driving back from the Montgomery airport. She had just dropped off her bags and packages at the airport for her trip home to Cleveland, Ohio. She diedn;t want to leave her car out in the open parking lot while she was away, so she was driving back to her house to park it in her garage.

She arrived home and listened to just a few more seconds of Christmas music before turning off the car. Then she locked the car in the garage and walked to the bus stop near her house. She planned to take the bus to a friend’s house. Then she and her friend would drive to the airport and take a plane home to Cleveland.

The cold wind nipped at her face and legs as she waited for the bus. But she didn’t mind it. She was happily thinking ahead to the wonderful Christmas vacation she was going to have.

Soon a yellow bus came chugging along and stopped. She got on without even thinking about it. Her mind was full of vacation thoughts. She dropped her fare in the box. Then she took an empty seat just a few rows from the front. She hardly noticed the other passengers on the bus. One was a white woman who sat ahead of her in the third row. The other was a black woman who was near the back.

As the bus began to go, Mrs. Robinson gazed out of the window. A pretty smile came to her light-brown face as she thought about her family and friends in Cleveland. She was eager to see them. She wanted to tell them all about her first four months of teaching at a black college in Montgomery.

Time seemed to disappear as Mrs. Robinson imagined talking to her family and friends. But after a few moments, she thought she heard an angry voice poking its way into her happy thoughts. At first she didn’t pay any attention. She was still smiling to herself, and her thoughts were far away.

Then she heard the voice again. It was closer and angrier this time. She turned her head, and there, standing next to her, was the bus driver, his face twisted into a scowl.

“Get up from there!” the driver yelled at her. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d stopped the bus and stomped back to her seat. “Get up from there! ” he yelled again. His right hand was raised as if he were about to hit her.

Mrs. Robinson was a qui=et, thoughtful person. She was polite, and she expected others to be polite to her. The driver’s behavior upset and frightened her. She didn’t know why he was yelling at her, but she was shocked and too afraid to ask. She surely didn’t want to be hit by this big man. She darted out of her seat and ran to the door, tears falling from her eyes.

Full of shame and hurt, she scrambled off the bus. “I felt like a dog,” she said later. She was glad none of her students were there to see what happened.

Suddenly, she realized what had made the driver yell at her. She’d sat in one of the rows of “whites only” seats.

In those days in Montgomery, a city law said that seats on the buses were segregated. That meant seats in the front part of the bus were only for white people. Black people had to sit in the back part of the bus. If there weren’t enough seats for whites, blacks had to give up their seats.

The law pretended to be “fair.” It said that blacks could only be asked to give up their seats it there were empty seats in the back. But in practice this wasn’t true. Even if it meant black people had to stand, they were made to give up their seats. Even if there were no white passengers at all, blacks could not sit in the first five rows of seats on a bus.

Some of the white bus drivers made the law seem even worse. They yelled at black passengers and called them names. After black passengers had paid their fares, drivers would sometimes order them to get back off the bus and walk to the backdoor to board. The worst of the drivers might then drive off before the black passengers could get back on the bus.

Mrs. Robinson had lived in Montgomery only a short time. Usually she didn’t ride city buses because she had a car. She had been told about the segregated seating. But it was the furthest thing from her mind when she took a seat on the bus that day.

Still, the bus driver had no right to mistreat her just because she’d forgotten about a law that made no sense. Her shame and fear turned to anger. During her vacation she kept thinking about how unfair and cruel the driver had been. She wanted to do something about it.

When she got back to Montgomery, she met with members of the Women’s political Council. Most of the women in this group were professionals. They were teachers, nurses, school principals, and social workers. Like many other black community groups in Montgomery, they were trying to improve the way blacks lived in their city. They worked to fight crime, to educate people, and to get people to vote.

Mrs. Robinson told the group about what had happened to her. They she listened as others told their stories.

“Oh, worse things than that have happened to me,” said one woman. “Drivers have called me names I can’t repeat here,” the woman recalled.

“A driver refused to make change for me, but he made change for white people,” another woman reported. “He wouldn’t let me on the bus,”

“You know, the drivers are just as mean to black men. If we or the men stand up to the drivers, they’ll call the police and have us arrested,” said another teacher. “Then we might lose our jobs,” she added.

Mrs. Robinson realized that what had happened to her had happened to many people. This did not make her any happier, though.

A few months later, in 1950, Mrs. Robinson became the president of the Women’s Political Council. Right away she called the mayor of Montgomery, Mr. Gayle. “We would like to meet with you and other city officials,” she said. “We’d like to work together with you to solve some problems that black people face when riding the buses.”

The mayor invited Mrs. Robinson and a few other women to City Hall. He was friendly. He listened to Mrs. Robinson and other women from the council. But he did not order any changes in the bus law, and he didn’t change the way the drivers behaved toward black people.

Enough Is Enough – Chapter 2
Year after year went by. The Women’s Political Council kept getting reports from blacks about bad treatment on the Montgomery buses. They complained to the mayor; but he refused to do anything about it.

Many black people were getting fed up with the buses and drivers. Some men chose to walk to work rater than take the bus. But most people kept on riding. They believed it was too dangerous to fight back. They were afraid that they would lose their jobs because most of them worked for white people. If they pushed too hard for change, they might even be killed.

In May of 1954, however, the Women’s Political Council had had enough. It had been more than five years since Mrs. Robinson had first met with the council. They had been patient too long.

The mayor announced that the bus fares were being raised. Blacks in Montgomery were angry. They didn’t mind paying more to ride the buses. But they did mind paying more when they were treated unfairly by the law and poorly by the drivers.

On May 21, Mrs. Robinson wrote a letter to Mayor Gayle. She and the Women’s Political Council demanded changes in the bus system. They wanted the drivers to stop ordering blacks to board at the back of the bus after they’d already paid at the front. They wanted buses to stop at every corner in black neighborhoods, just as they did in white neighborhoods.

Mrs. Robinson reminded Mayor Gayle that many more blacks than whites rode the buses. She warned him that changes had better be made. Otherwise, blacks would stop riding the buses. They would boycott the buses! Then the buses would lose money.

Mayor Gayle did not answer Mrs. Robinson’s letter. So the black community prepared to carry out the council’s plan. It took more than a year to get ready. Nearly seventy community groups had to be told about the plan. Church groups, business groups, and social groups all talked about the plan. Some groups were still afraid of causing “trouble” by boycotting the buses. But they all agreed that something had to be done. Finally, the leaders of most of the groups agreed on the idea of a boycott. All they needed was the right moment.

That moment came on the afternoon of December 1, 1955. Mrs. Rosa Parks got on a bus in downtown Montgomery. She was tired from her busy job of sewing clothes at a department store. She got on the Cleveland Avenue bus and say down in the black section near the back.

The bus rumbled from stop to stop. More and more people got on. Some were white, some were black. Soon there were no more seats in the black section. Many blacks were standing. The white section filled up, too. Then a white man got on and couldn’t find a seat.

The driver, James Blake shouted to the back of the bus. He told Mrs. Parks and three other black people to get up so that the white man could sit down. Blacks weren’t even allowed to sit next to whites on a bus. To make “room” for one white rider; four seated black riders were being ordered to move. Mrs. Parks and the other black riders said nothing. And they didn’t move.

“Y’all better make it light on yourself and let me have those seats,” Mr. Blake warned. The two black people sitting across from Mrs. Parks slowly but surely got up. They didn’t want to get up. They knew it was unfair. But they got up anyway. So did the man sitting next to Mrs. Parks. But Mrs. Parks kept her seat.

Mr. Blake looked at Mrs. Parks in the rearview mirror. “Are you going to stand up?” he asked raising his voice.

“No, I’m not,” Mrs. Parks said firmly.

Mr. Blake stopped the bus and came back to where Mrs. Parks was sitting. He put his hands on his hips and gave her a mean look. “Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested.”

Mrs. Parks was a gentle, quiet woman. But she was also proud and strong. She looked squarely at Mr. Blake and said simply, “You may do that.”

Mrs. Blake marched off the bus and returned with two policemen. One of the policemen folded his arms and looked at Mrs. Parks. “Did the driver ask you to get up? He asked.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Parks calmly. Her voice showed she ws not afraid.

The policeman leaned forward and frowned. “Why don’t you stand up?” he asked, getting angry.

Now it was Mrs. Parks’s turn to frown. She looked at the three men. Her eyes showed her anger. “Why do you push us around?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” said the policeman. “But the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”

The policemen took Mrs. Parks to jail. They took her fingerprints as if she was a criminal. She had broken the law, but the law was unfair. It was based on the idea that black people were not as good as white people. This idea was very different from one of America’s most important ideas – that all people are created equal.

Mrs. Parks called home. She spoke to her mother. “Please tell my husband to come and get me out of jail,” she said in a tired, angry voice. Mr. Parks was not at home, so Mrs. Parks’s mother called Mr. E.D.Nixon.

Mr. Nixon was an important leader in the black community. A tall, dark-skinned man, he worked as a porter for the railroad. And he worked hard to make life better for black people in Montgomery.

When he heard that Mrs. Parks had been arrested, he got busy. He called the jail to find out why she’d been arrested. But the jailer would not hell him. So he called his friend, Clifford Durr, a white lawyer.

Together, Mr. Nixon and Mr. Durr got Mrs. Parks released from jail. Mr. Nixon paid a bond that allowed Mrs. Parks to leave. He would get the money back when she came before a judge to be tried for breaking the bus law.

Mr. Nixon believed the law was unfair, too. He wanted to put a stop to it. As he talked to Mrs. Parks, he had a n idea.. In Washington, DC, the Supreme Court had just made a ruling. The ruling said that segregated schools were no longer legal. That meant black and white children could no longer be sent to separate schools. All states had to obey this ruling. If segregated schools aren’t legal anymore, Mr. Nixon thought, maybe segregated buses aren’t either.

“I think we can break down segregation on the bus with your case,” Mr. Nixon told Mrs. Parks.

It was a hard decision for Mrs. Parks to make. If she stood up to the segregation law, bad things might happen to her. She might lose her job. She might be thrown in jail again. She might be hurt or even killed. She wanted to talk to her husband about it.

Mr. Parks was very upset. He knew all the dangers his wife would face. She had already been arrested just for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. By carrying the protest further, his wife would be asking for serious trouble. “The white folks will kill you Rosa,” he said. He wanted her to let the matter drop.

But Mrs. Parks was very brave. She wanted to do something to help the black peple of Montgomery. She wanted to make the city a better place for everyone. “I’ll go along with you, Mr. Nixon,” she said.

Mrs. Nixon and other black leaders began making plans. They were going to show that Mrs. Parks should not have been arrested. They were going to show that Montgomery’s black citizens weren’t going to accept the bus loaw anymore. They were going to show that black people were tired of being treated unfairly.

THIS STORY WILL BE FINISHED AT THE END OF THIS WEEK. We welcome any comments.
Taken from Walking for Freedom, The Montgomery Bus Boycott by Richard Kelso, Alex Haley, General Editor