revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

42
the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed . 33 The MIA organized
a car pool
to transport black workers who lived too far to walk back
and forth to work . The MIA's demands were :
a . a guarantee of courteous treatment ;
b . passengers to be seated on a first-come
with blacks seating from the back ;
first-served basis
c .
employment of Negro drivers on predominantly Negro bus
routes . 34
At community meetings, Dr . Martin Luther King, Jr ., emerged as the
pricipal leader of the boycott . Montgomery merchants and civic leaders
tried to break the boycott but after a year of struggle, the U .S . Supreme
Court declared Alabama's state and local laws supporting segregation on
buses unconstitutional .
The Montgomery boycott served as an example of
successful mass direct action . Dr . King insisted the success of the boycott
had been because its participants had adhered to non-violence . He
soon became the advocate of a passive resistance movement . Other communities
organized similar campaigns .
By 1957, Dr . King had organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) to develop the non-violent mass direct action movement . Dr .
King, along with A .
Phillip Randolph and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, organ
ized a mass prayer vigil in Washington, D .C . which was the largest black
protest demonstration in history . By 1958, small non-violent demonstrations
were tested in different places in the country .
Nineteen sixty began with the aura of high expectations for black working
class struggles for national democratic rights . On February 1, 1960,
33 Ebony Pictorial History of Black Americans . Vol . 3, (Chicago : Johnson
Publishing Company, 1970 .
3 4 Haywood W . Burns, The Voices of Black Protest in Ame rica (New York :
Oxford University Press, 7_96-73 -, p . 39 .