[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E201-E202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 COMMEMORATING 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN MONTGOMERY BUS 
                                BOYCOTT

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 23, 2016

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, 60 years ago today, a pivotal event 
occurred in Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the modern Civil 
Rights Movement.
  On this day 60 years ago, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began on 
December 5, 1955, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a 
white man and move to ``Colored'' section in the back of the bus, was 
in its 57th day.
  To that point, the boycott had enjoyed remarkable success.
  Morning buses that normally would be crowded with African Americans 
heading to work throughout the city were essentially empty.
  Instead, many African Americans gathered near the bus stops, waiting 
for rides, many of which came from whites whose primary interest was 
getting their domestic employees to their homes or other workers to 
their places of business.
  Others rode Negro taxis, with many drivers giving reduced fares that 
day.
  But thousands more walked to work and school.
  An estimated that some 17,000 African Americans took part in the 
boycott initially, a number that would grow to 42,000, aided in part by 
the action by the bus system itself.
  In particular, within days after the boycott began, bus officials 
asked the Montgomery City Commission for permission to close routes to 
many of the primary black communities, arguing that the boycott had 
made service to those areas no longer financially attractive.
  So in those parts of town, even the handful of African Americans who 
might have wanted to use the buses could not do so.

[[Page E202]]

  In the early days of the boycott African American taxi companies 
helped transport former bus riders and did so for the reduced fare of 
10 cents per ride.
  In retaliation, city officials began strictly enforcing a long 
dormant city ordinance that set minimum fares at 45 cents, which priced 
taxi rides on a daily basis out of the reach of many working-class 
African Americans.
  But despite the backlash, retaliation, and harassment by the local 
police, the boycott would not be broken.
  The most sweeping official action designed to intimidate boycott 
leaders came in February 1956, when the Montgomery grand jury indicted 
89 boycott leaders, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; 
Rosa Parks; Rev. Ralph David Abernathy; and several other participating 
black ministers.
  The charges were based on a seldom-enforced 1921 state statute that 
barred boycotts without,``just cause.''
  Those indicted were arrested over the next few days, booked and 
released on bond.
  But as official tactics failed to discourage the boycott, unofficial 
intimidation would soon take a more dangerous turn such as the bombing 
of the parsonage in which King and his family lived was bombed.
  Mr. Speaker, the Montgomery Bus Boycott showed the nation and the 
world that there is a limit to a people's patience and tolerance in the 
face of injustice.
  In rebelling against the unjust, unfair, dehumanizing, and 
discriminatory practice of racial segregation, the Montgomery Bus 
Boycotters were acting in the finest American tradition, following the 
admonition in the Declaration of Independence that:

       [A]ll experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed 
     to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right 
     themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are 
     accustomed.
       But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing 
     invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them 
     under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their 
     duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards 
     for their future security.

  Mr. Speaker, the books of literature are filled with stories about 
the plucky underdog striving and succeeding against the odds but what 
is amazing and remarkable about the Montgomery Bus Boycott is that it 
is a modern day story of little David felling mighty Goliath that has 
the advantage of being true and inspired other successful social 
movements around the world.
  The Montgomery Boycott shows that one person can make a difference 
and can inspire similar acts of courage in others which when combined 
send out ripples of hope that, as Robert Kennedy, said ``can sweep down 
the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.''
  Rosa Parks said she acted because she wanted to be free:

       Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not 
     alone. There were many others who felt the same way.

  And inspired by her example, others acted, and then joined by the 
actions of others, and then still others, the bus boycott succeeded.
  Mr. Speaker, 60 years has passed since a small band of committed 
activists, armed only with their faith in a righteous cause, won the 
battle of Montgomery and set in motion a movement that tore down the 
walls of legalized injustice across the South.
  They changed America for the better and for that we owe them an 
eternal debt of gratitude.

                          ____________________