History of the United States II / Unit 13 USH2 1856 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
The idea
The familiar story credits Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks with starting the Montgomery bus boycott. The anchor says the Women's Political Council, an organisation of Black women activists, organised it. The Yawp records that the Council's head, Joanne Robinson, worked through the night with a colleague and two students to mimeograph over fifty thousand handbills calling for the boycott.
In practice
Forty thousand African American riders staying off the buses on December fifth, the first day, as the anchor records.
Where people slip
Ministers then rallied their congregations and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, choosing as its president a twenty-six-year-old Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr. The correction matters: the boycott was organised by women before it had a famous leader, and King emerged from it. Digital History adds that Parks's refusal was her own spontaneous decision, not an NAACP plan.
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