bus boycotts
Refused transit rides
Bus boycotts are organized refusals to use public bus systems as a form of protest, most famously associated with the American civil rights movement.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56, sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, became a model for nonviolent resistance and launched Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.
The bus boycotts demonstrated the economic power of collective action.
- MontgomeryAlabama's seat of government
- Rosa ParksCivil rights icon
- civil rightsGuaranteed individual legal protections
- civil rights movementOrganized effort against discrimination
- segregationForced separation by group
Martin Luther King · mass protest · protest · African American · Jim Crow · Jim Crow laws · NAACP · resistance · peaceful resistance · desegregation · nonviolent · march · Alabama · passengers · public transit · seats · empty seats · walking
- Black HistoryMartin Luther King Jr., MLK, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass
- social movementscivil rights movement, women's liberation, labor movement, feminist movement, suffrage movement
- Jim CrowJim Crow laws, separate but equal, segregation laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, whites only
bus boycottsacquiescence
Unresisting acceptance
sit-ins · lunch counter sit-ins · armed resistance · race riots · occupations
buses, busing, boycott, boycotts, boycotted, boycotting, boycotter, boycotters