Interview

Interview

This study is based on a personal interview from a Director of History Department of London University. Mr. Smith being a Director is currently teaching a course on American history and his interest attracted him to teach a broad way of Civil Rights Movement. At the time of interview, the feelings of Mr. Smith were quiet different and he was looking so much confused. Actually he was trying his best to recall his memory and the actual incidents that happened at that time. Mr. Smith's opinion brought much more clarification and close information for various people.

Mr. Smith said that he can now feel that those moments just came back and everything is around him. In Mr. Smith's point of view, the event that triggered the Montgomery bus boycott took place in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. On that day, a local seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. Local custom dictated that black passengers sat at the back of the bus, while whites sat in front. If the white section became full, African Americans were required to give up their seats in the back (Hine, Hine, and Harold, 2007). When Parks refused to move to give her seat to a white rider, she was taken to jail and was later bailed out by a local civil rights leader.

Many of the African American residents of Montgomery, Alabama, were politically organized long before the fateful day in December when Parks was arrested. For example, the Women's Political Council (WPC) was founded in 1946. The organization had been lobbying the city for improved conditions on the buses for a decade before the bus boycott began. In addition, Montgomery had an active branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Parks worked as a secretary for the organization.

In addition, Parks was not the first resident of Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger. However, local civil rights leaders deliberately decided to capitalize on her arrest as a chance to challenge local segregation laws. Parks was a politically sophisticated activist as well as a middle-class, well-respected citizen.

Rosa Parks is best remembered for her role in the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid-1950s, which helped launch the modern civil rights movement in the United States. Shortly after Parks's arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, a leader of ...