Learning Objective for Organization and Protest in the Civil Rights–Era South: The Montgomery Bus Boycott

This unit seeks to compel you to confront difficult questions, both historical and moral, through historical documents related to the Montgomery bus boycott. In particular, how do people who historically live under conditions of oppression, legal exclusion, and extralegal violence learn to imagine and then enact for themselves life under a different and more just social order? This unit also introduces you to some of the key debates among historians about interpreting the civil rights movement. By examining the documents in this unit, you will join historians in trying to determine whether social movements arise from the lives of ordinary people seeking to create more just social conditions for themselves, or whether they emerge because important leaders articulate, energize, and mobilize masses of people. After reading these sources, you should be able to answer the central question: What does the successful organization of African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, reveal about the nature of leadership and the work of ordinary people in social movements?