IN-CLASS ONLINE LESSON #5

ONLINE LESSON
Group #5: Montgomery Bus Boycott and Scottsboro Trials

a. What event sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott?(Shao Wei)

It started in December 1 ,1955. Rosa Parks who was an African American, did not surrender her seat for a white man when she was sitting in the bus in Alabama. the reason i say surrender was because at the time blacks were supposed to give up their seats to white people because Alabama at the time was a segregated country. Rosa parks was then sent to court where she was found guilty and so was fined a total of us $ 14 dollars. with her arrest, sparked the Montgomery bus boycott where blacks refused to take bus services in Alabama.

b. Which two organizations were primarily involved in coordinating the boycott? (Glenn)

WPC and Montgomery NAACP

c. Why did the boycott catapult Martin Luther King, Jr. to prominence?(Shao Wei)

The bus boycott was planned by E.D. Nixon and after that was led by martin Luther king Jr, which lasted 386 days. in fact the situation became so intense that martin Luther kings house was bombed. king was arrested during the boycott and the united states district court ruling in the end ended the racial segregation on all Montgomery bus services . this was how martin Luther king Jr rose to fame during the boycott.

d. How is the Scottsboro trial related to the trial in TKAM? (Winston)

The Scottsboro trial was related to the trial in TKAM in a sense that both trials saw coloured people getting accused of rape. There was a miscarriage of justice and in the end, the coloured people were eventually ‘found guilty’ Back then, many people were racist and sided the white people. These two incidents have caused an uproar in the community due to the unfairness of the law.

e. State the specifics of each trial and why they were significant.(Chuan Xin)

Montgomery bus boycott
There was not really much of a trial in this case because the trial only lasted 30minutes, but instead, the main focus of this movement was the bus boycott. The bus boycott was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her seat to the whites because she ‘did not feel like it’. She was arrested and fined and jailed for a trial that only lasted 30 minutes. This sparked of the bus boycott, in which the famous Martin Luther King was in charge of.

The main aim of the bus boycott was to let the whites know that the blacks have had enough of then treatment by the whites. 90% of the blacks stayed of the bus service in the country, and thus the bus operators have lost a lot of business. The KKK took action by intimidating the blacks, but the blacks were under orders to play it cool, and thus did not retaliate at all, no matter what the KKK did. This non-action made the KKK feel even angrier, and thus they started a lot of burnings and killings. However, the blacks stand was impassive, and in the end, due to their efforts, they won the match against the whites.

The Scottsboro Trial
The trial was significant because the jury was all white, which increased the chances for a miscarriage of justice during the trial

f. In what way are these trials similar?(Jun Jie)

They are similar in terms of racism towards to black, when both the cases are either minor, or when the “culprit” is totally Innocent.

Compiled and edited by Tan Yan Shen

Reflection

The topic that we did on that had to do with racism was the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Scotsborro Trials. After reading up about both cases of racism, I feel that the whites in the past were really extreme in their methods of putting down other races to maintain their supremacy. I am really glad that even though racism is not completely eradicated and most probably never will be, it is already greatly reduced and the hurt caused to the blacks have been minimized potentially.

In relation to TKAM and Mississippi Burning, I feel that all of the main ‘leaders’ of racism was the KKK. In the bus boycott, they also appeared to terrorize the blacks when they stopped taking the bus. In TKAM, the court was most likely KKK members, since there was a previous mention about clans and gangs by Scout, and Jem was trying to bluff her into believing that there was not any. In Mississippi Burning, the KKK presence is outright, where they kidnaped and killed the civil rights workers and set fire to all the black communities houses and churches.

The KKK were very immoral, and most of the extreme actions taken against blacks were seemingly done by the KKK and associated members of the society. They guided their actions through their twisted aim of maintaining white supremacy, but they never thought about what the white supremacy will achieve for them. The KKK were misguided and did not spare a thought for the black community by ‘walking around in their skin’, as said in TKAM.