Sports Science

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons. The protest was intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Racial Segregation is the separation of human beings into racial groups affecting each group's daily life. Racial Segregation severely restricted access to goods, services and activities such as eating in restaurants, drinking from water fountains, using bathrooms, accessing educational opportunities, or purchasing homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Many historically significant figures of the Civil Rights movement were involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott; including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful because it resulted in a crippling financial deficit to the Montgomery public transit system. The boycott was effective because the city's African American population was not only the backbone of the boycott, but also represented the majority of the transit system's paying customers. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was important because it set the tone for the Civil Rights movement. In particular, the boycott gave Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a position of leadership within the National movement and demonstrated that non-violent methods of protest could be effective.

Under the Montgomery transit system's segregation policy white passengers boarding busses were expected to take a seat in the front rows of the bus, filling the bus toward the back. African American passengers boarding busses were expected to sit in the back rows of the bus, filling the bus toward the front. The two sections would eventually meet, and the bus would be full. If other African American boarded the bus, they were required to stand, but if another Caucasian boarded the bus, then every African American passenger sitting in the row nearest to the front would be forced to stand and create a vacancy for white passengers. When boarding busses African American Passengers were forced to pay at the front of the bus at the departure stop, get off of the bus, and re-enter from a separate door in the back of the bus. In many cases, drivers would drive away before black passengers had the opportunity to re-board in the back.