Read complete books and articles on: Montgomery Bus Boycott

Civil Rights - rights that a nation's inhabitants enjoy by law. The term is broader than "political rights," which refer only to rights devolving from the franchise and are held usually only by a citizen, and unlike "natural rights," civil rights have a legal as well as a philosophical basis. In the United States civil rights are usually thought of in terms of the specific rights guaranteed in the Constitution: freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, and the rights to due process of law and to equal protection under the law.

Civil Rights in the United States

Since the Civil War, much of the concern over civil rights in the United States has focused on efforts to extend these rights fully to African Americans. The first legislative attempts to assure African Americans an equal political and legal status were the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875. Those acts bestowed upon African Americans such freedoms as the right to sue and be sued, to give evidence, and to hold real and personal property. The 1866 act was of dubious constitutionality and was reenacted in 1870 only after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fourth Civil Rights Act attempted to guarantee to the African Americans those social rights that were still withheld. It penalized innkeepers, proprietors of public establishments, and owners of public conveyances for discriminating against African Americans in accommodations, but was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883 on the ground that these were not properly civil rights and hence not a field for federal legislation.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1875 there was no more federal legislation in this field until the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, although several states passed their own civil-rights laws. The 20th-century struggle to expand civil rights for African Americans has involved the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and others. The civil-rights movement, led especially by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the late 1950s and 60s, and the executive leadership provided by President Lyndon B. Johnson, encouraged the passage of the most comprehensive civil-rights legislation to date, the Civil Rights Act of 1964; it prohibited discrimination for reason of color, race, religion, or national origin in places of public accommodation covered by interstate commerce, i.e., restaurants, hotels, motels, and theaters. Besides dealing with the desegregation of public schools, the act, in Title VII, forbade discrimination in employment. Title VII also prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex.

In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, which placed federal observers at polls to ensure equal voting rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 dealt with housing and real estate discrimination. In addition to congressional action on civil rights, there has been action by other branches of the government. The most notable of these were the Supreme Court decisions in 1954 and 1955 declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and the court's rulings in 1955 banning segregation in publicly financed parks, playgrounds, and golf courses.

In the 1960s women began to organize around the issue of their civil rights (see feminism). The federal Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, and by the early 1970s over 40 states had passed equal pay laws. In 1972 the Senate passed an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) intended to prohibit all discrimination based on sex, but after failing to win ratification in a sufficient number of states, the ERA was abandoned. Since the 1970s a number of gay-rights groups have worked, mainly on the local and state levels, for legislation that prevents discrimination in housing and employment (see gay-rights movement). In a further extension of civil-rights protection, the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) barred discrimination against disabled persons in employment and provided for improved access to public facilities.

Bibliography

See W. E. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment (1988); R. Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights (1989); L. W. Levy, Civil Rights (1989); T. Branch, Pillar of Fire (1997); F. M. Wirt, "We Ain't What We Was" (1997); A. Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 (2001); D. McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (2001); C. Polsgrove, Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement (2001); C. Carter et al., ed., Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1973 (2 vol., 2003); J. Rosenberg and Z. Karabell, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes (2003).

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12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Montgomery Bus Boycott

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott » Read Now
by Stewart Burns. 362 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
2.

The Turning Tide: From the Desegregation of the Armed Forces to the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1946-1958) » Read Now
by Margaret Dornfeld. 120 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
3.

How Long? How Long? African American Women and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Chap. Three "Women and the Escalation of the Civil Rights Movement") » Read Now
by Belinda Robnett. pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

A compelling and readable narrative history, How Long? How Long? presents both a rethinking of social movement theory and a controversial thesis: that chroniclers have egregiously neglected the most important leaders of the Civil Rights movement, African-American women, in favor of higher-profile...
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A compelling and readable narrative history, How Long? How Long? presents both a rethinking of social movement theory and a controversial thesis: that chroniclers have egregiously neglected the most important leaders of the Civil Rights movement, African-American women, in favor of higher-profile African-American men and white women. Author Belinda Robnett argues that the diversity of experiences of the African-American women organizers has been underemphasized in favor of monolithic treatments of their femaleness and blackness. Drawing heavily on interviews with actual participants in the American Civil Rights movement, this work retells the movement as seen through the eyes and spoken through the voices of African-American women participants. It is the first book to provide an analysis of race, class, gender, and culture as substructures that shaped the organization and outcome of the movement. Robnett examines the differences among women participants in the movement and offers the first cohesive analysis of the gendered relations and interactions among its black activists, thus demonstrating that femaleness and blackness cannot be viewed as sufficient signifiers for movement experience and individual identity. Finally, this book makes a significant contribution to social movement theory by providing a crucial understanding of the continuity and complexity of social movements, clarifying the need for different layers of leadership that come to satisfy different movement needs. An engaging narrative history as well as a major contribution to social movement and feminist theory, How Long? How Long? will appeal to students and scholars of social activism, women's studies, American history, and African-American studies, and to general readers interested in the perennially fascinating story of the American Civil Rights movement.
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4.

Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West (Chap. 6 "Resisting Arrest: Jo Ann Robinson and the Power to Move") » Read Now
by Virginia Scharff. 239 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

"Virginia Scharff's wonderfully readable account of women in motion complicates and enriches our understanding of the nineteenth and twentieth century Wests. Her gendered remapping of the regional landscape explodes traditional notions of western movement. All students of women and gender, travel...
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"Virginia Scharff's wonderfully readable account of women in motion complicates and enriches our understanding of the nineteenth and twentieth century Wests. Her gendered remapping of the regional landscape explodes traditional notions of western movement. All students of women and gender, travel and place, the West and America, would do well to read this excellent book."--David M. Wrobel, author of "Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory, and the Creation of the American West
"Virginia Scharff claims for women what has long been central to the masculine mythology of the West--free movement and its many gifts, real and imagined. Her book is as exhilarating and as intellectually and emotionally expansive as our enduring dream of flight across the American land."--Elliott West, author of "The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado
""Brilliant is not a word that is often a part of my critical vocabulary, but brilliantly is how "Twenty Thousand Roads begins. When writing of Sacagawea and Susan Magoffin, Virginia Scharff shows vividly how a single life can be a source of sophisticated cultural analysis without becoming an academic artifact or an object of condescension."--Richard White, author of "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West
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5.

Let Freedom Ring: A Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (Chap. Three "The Montgomery Bus Boycott") » Read Now
by Peter B. Levy. 276 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This book traces the story of the civil rights movement through the written and spoken words of those who participated in it. It includes both classic texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and lesser-known gems, such as Robert Moses'...
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This book traces the story of the civil rights movement through the written and spoken words of those who participated in it. It includes both classic texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and lesser-known gems, such as Robert Moses' "Letter from a Mississippi Jail Cell" and James Lawson's address to SNCC's 1960 founding meeting. "This is a documentary collection that has been needed for a long time. The burgeoning interest in the civil rights movement argues for such a work, and the need to have the experience of the movement in the participants' own words demands it. Words counted during the civil rights movement, and Levy's collection . . . is the best and most accessible." Randall M. Miller Professor of History Director of American Studies Saint Joseph's University
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6.

To Redeem the Soul of America: Public Relations and the Civil Rights Movement, in Journal of Public Relations Research » Read Now
by Linda Childers Hon. 50 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...situation that led to the Montgomery bus boycott, the birth of the SCLC, the...Rally", 1956). THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT Within this broader context...power. (p. 191)...
7.

The Civil Rights Movement ("The Montgomery Bus Boycott" begins on p. 9) » Read Now
by Peter B. Levy. 226 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Designed for secondary school and college student research, The Civil Rights Movement is a one-stop guide that includes clear analysis and ready reference components. Combining narrative description, analytical essays, chronology, biographical profiles, and the text of key primary documents, this...
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Designed for secondary school and college student research, The Civil Rights Movement is a one-stop guide that includes clear analysis and ready reference components. Combining narrative description, analytical essays, chronology, biographical profiles, and the text of key primary documents, this work fills a gap in the existing literature. Drawing on the most recent research, Levy, author of the acclaimed Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, provides an outstanding introduction to the Civil Rights movement, its development, issues, and leaders. Six essays analyze the crucial aspects of the movement, including a concluding essay that assesses its legacy. Ready reference features include: a chronology of events; lengthy biographical profiles of 20 key civil rights activists; the text of 15 seminal documents valuable for student research; a glossary of selected terms; and an annotated bibliography of recommended further reading and audiovisual materials.
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8.

Judge Frank Johnson and Human Rights in Alabama (includes "Bus Boycotts and Pariahs") » Read Now
by Tinsley E. Yarbrough. 270 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
9.

Leveraging the Law: Using the Courts to Achieve Social Change ("Did the Federal Judiciary Help Spark the Civil Rights Movement? Brown, Courts, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott" begins on p. 66) » Read Now
by David A. Schultz. 319 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
10.

White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Part VI "The 1950s: From Willie McGee to the Montgomery Struggle") » Read Now
by Herbert Shapiro. 565 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...study is divided in two parts; the first volume covers the decades from the inception of Reconstruction to the Montgomery bus boycott of the 1950s and the second, on which...
11.

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Discussion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins on p. 369) » Read Now
by Michael J. Klarman. 655 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision...
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Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision invalidated statutes segregating public schools How great an impact did judicial rulings such as Plessy and Brown have? How much did such Court decisions influence the larger world of race relations? In From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael J. Klarman examines the social and political impact of the Supreme Court's decisions involving race relations from Plessy, the Progressive Era, and the Interwar Period to World Wars I and II, Brown and the Civil Rights Movement. He explores the wide variety of consequences that Brown may have had--raising the salience of race issues, educating opinion, mobilizing supporters, energizing opponents of racial change. He concludes that Brown was ultimately more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. The decision created concrete occasions for violent confrontation--court ordered school desegregation and radicalized southern politics, leading to the election of politicians who calculated that violent suppression of civil rights demonstrations would win votes. It was such violence--vividly captured on television--that ultimately transformed northern opinion on race, leading to the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s. A fascinating investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, spells out in exhaustive detail the political and social context against which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of those decisions on the civil rights movement and beyond.
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12.

Boycott in America: How Imagination and Ideology Shape the Legal Mind (Chap. 6 "Radial Category of Civil Rights Boycotts") » Read Now
by Gary Minda. 274 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Gary Minda's critical study of boycotts in American law and culture focuses on how the word boycott has developed as a metaphoric, rather than as a rational or logical, form of reasoning. Minda first discusses the history, interpretation, and understanding of boycotts. He then turns to the role of...
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Gary Minda's critical study of boycotts in American law and culture focuses on how the word boycott has developed as a metaphoric, rather than as a rational or logical, form of reasoning. Minda first discusses the history, interpretation, and understanding of boycotts. He then turns to the role of metaphor in the interpretation of boycotts and of boycott law.
Drawing on cognitive psychology and linguistic theory, Minda argues that the metaphors judges choose in describing boycotts determine how they view boycotts: "(F)rom the very first time the word boycott appeared in a reported decision in America, judges have used the word to signify inflammatory, as well as sublime, legal meanings and connotations. Judges have compared group boycotts to 'bloodthirsty tigers' and they have analyzed boycott activity as if it were a 'disease' infecting the internal biological system of the body. Judges have compared group boycotts to 'soapbox oratory, ' and they have concluded that boycott activity is a 'special form of,political communication.'"
For lawyers, judges, and legal scholars, this book provides a clear and cogent examination of boycott law. Linguistic and cognitive theorists should find the book useful for illustrating how metaphor and cognitive theory can be used to analyze legal opinions. Historians will find new histories of boycott. Lay readers interested in understanding the role of boycotts in American law and society will find the book insightful.
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