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Unlock This CourseEmmett Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, in the North. In August 1955 he travelled to Mississippi to stay with his great-uncle, Mose Wright, near the small town of Money.
On 24 August Emmett went into a grocery shop in Money. Carolyn Bryant, the white woman behind the counter, said that he had whistled at her and been cheeky. Four days later, in the early hours of 28 August, her husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, took Emmett from his great-uncle's house at gunpoint. They beat him and shot him. His body was found in the Tallahatchie River on 31 August.
Two things made this murder different from earlier lynchings.
Emmett's mother, Mamie, had his body brought home to Chicago. She insisted on an open coffin at the funeral so that the world could see what had been done to her son. Tens of thousands of people filed past. The black magazine Jet printed photographs, and the story was reported across the USA.
Bryant and Milam were tried in Sumner, Mississippi, in September 1955. Mose Wright bravely stood up in court and pointed out the two men. The jury was all white and all male. It took about an hour to find them not guilty. In January 1956 the two men sold their story to Look magazine and admitted the killing. They could not be tried twice for the same crime.
No law changed. The importance of the case was its effect on public opinion.
Key terms:
On the buses of Montgomery, Alabama, the front seats were for white passengers. Black passengers paid at the front, then often had to get off and climb back on through the rear door. If the white seats filled up, the driver could order black passengers to stand. Yet about three-quarters of the bus passengers were black.
On 1 December 1955 Rosa Parks, aged 42, was told to give up her seat to a white man. She refused and was arrested.
Rosa Parks is often described as a tired seamstress who had simply had enough. This is misleading. She was a seamstress, but she was also an experienced activist. She had been secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP since 1943, and in the summer of 1955 she had been on a training course for civil rights workers. Local leaders had been waiting for the right case. A 15-year-old, Claudette Colvin, had been arrested for the same thing in March 1955, but they judged that a respected, married woman with a spotless record would win more support.
The response was fast:
At first the MIA asked for very little: polite drivers, black drivers on mainly black routes, and seats filled on a first come, first served basis, with black passengers still filling the bus from the back. The city refused even this, so the boycott went on. It lasted 381 days.
Tens of thousands of people walked, shared lifts or cycled. The MIA ran a carpool (an organised system of shared car rides) of about 300 cars. The bus company lost most of its passengers and a large part of its income.
Some boycotters lost their jobs. On 30 January 1956 King's house was bombed while his wife and baby were inside. He told the angry crowd outside to go home peacefully. In February about 90 leaders, King among them, were charged under an old law against boycotts. King was tried in March and fined 500 dollars.
The NAACP helped four black women to challenge bus segregation in a case called Browder v Gayle. On 13 November 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses broke the Constitution. The boycott ended on 20 December 1956. The next day black passengers in Montgomery sat where they liked.
King insisted throughout that the protest must stay peaceful. The arrests and the bombing brought reporters to Montgomery and made him known across the country.
Don't write that Rosa Parks was just a tired old lady: she was 42 and a trained NAACP activist. Don't say the boycott alone ended bus segregation: it took the Supreme Court ruling in Browder v Gayle as well.
Explain two effects of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) on the civil rights movement. [8 marks]
One effect was that the movement gained a new method of protest. About 90 per cent of black passengers stayed off the buses on the first day, and for 381 days most kept walking or used the MIA's carpool of around 300 cars, so the bus company lost a large part of its income. Together with the Supreme Court's ruling in Browder v Gayle in November 1956, this ended segregation on the city's buses. This showed campaigners that peaceful action by large numbers of ordinary people, backed by their spending power, could defeat a Jim Crow law. Its example was copied even before it ended: a bus boycott began in Tallahassee in May 1956.
A second effect was that the movement gained a national leader. Martin Luther King, a 26-year-old minister, was chosen as president of the MIA in December 1955. His speeches, his arrest and his calm response when his house was bombed in January 1956 were reported across the USA. This meant that he was now widely known and trusted, so in January 1957 he was able to set up the SCLC with other ministers. This led to protest being organised across the South.
What lifts this to the top level: each paragraph names one effect, supports it with precise facts and dates, and then explains step by step how the boycott produced that effect.
One effect alone cannot score more than half marks, so always write two. Here the question is about effects on the civil rights movement, so don't retell the story of Rosa Parks's arrest. Start each paragraph with what changed because of the boycott, such as a new method or a new leader.