Rosa Parks and Civil Disobedience by Morretta Alison;

Author:Morretta, Alison;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing LLC

33

A Unified Front

If they want bus transportation, they can ride

the buses. I don’t believe the majority of whites

care one way or another and certainly not

enough to destroy our heritage and way of life

so that Negroes will get on buses and ride them.

Despite Gayle’s assertion that whites did not care

about the boycott, WCC membership continued to grow.

e organization used intimidation tactics to try to end

the boycott and targeted any citizen—white or black—who

supported desegregation. Whites were threatened with losing

their jobs and their social standing and were blacklisted if

they did not support the WCC. e WCC also pressured

insurance companies not to insure drivers (both black and

white) who supported the boycott. White landlords raised

the rent of many black citizens, including Parks.

e WCC also used the police force to harass black

citizens. Commissioner Sellers ordered his ocers to give

out excessive trac violations and parking tickets to black

drivers and to harass black people for “loitering” in white

neighborhoods. Some of the boycott pick-up sites were

located in the white area of the city because many of the

boycotters worked as domestics in white homes. Groups of

black citizens “loitering” were simply people who gathered

at a designated location on their way home from work.

Prosecution of Leaders

On February 21, 1956, eighty-nine boycott leaders

(including Parks, King, and many black ministers) were

charged with violating a 1921 Alabama state law against

boycotting without just cause. Seventy-ve of those leaders

were arrested and processed at the county jail on February 22.

e famous photograph of Parks being ngerprinted, which

has commonly been mistaken for her December 1955 arrest,

was actually taken on this day. Of those cases, only King’s

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