This Day in Civil Rights History - DECEMBER

On December 28, 1956, barely one week after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended and the busing system in Montgomery was finally integrated, white snipers shot Rosa Jordan, a 22-year-old Black woman, who was 8 months pregnant, on an integrated bus as it traveled through a Black neighborhood.

From December 1, 1955, until December 20, 1956, Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted the city bus system to protest their poor treatment on the racially segregated buses. Participants faced threats, violence, and harassment, but were ultimately victorious in December 1956 when the United States Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle.

After the ruling and official repeal of the city's bus segregation policies, the Black community returned to integrated buses. But Black riders now faced the threat of violence from white residents who resented the boycott and its results. In a terrifying development, snipers began to target the buses soon after integrated riding commenced.

On the evening of December 28, shots were fired into a desegregated bus traveling through a Black neighborhood, and Ms. Jordan was shot in both legs. Ms. Jordan was transported to Oak Street General Hospital, but doctors were hesitant to remove a bullet lodged in her leg for fear that it could spark premature labor. Instead, Ms. Jordan was told she would have to remain in the hospital for the duration of her pregnancy.

After the bus driver and passengers were questioned at police headquarters, the bus resumed service. Less than an hour later, near the same neighborhood, the same bus was again targeted by snipers. This time, no one was hit.

These shootings followed two earlier sniper attacks on Montgomery buses that occurred the week before but targeted buses carrying no passengers and resulted in no injuries. On the night of Ms. Jordan’s shooting, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers ordered all buses to end service for the night. The following day, three city commissioners met with a bus company official and decided to suspend all night bus service after 5:00 p.m. until after the New Year’s holiday. The curfew policy did not end until January 22, 1957.

On December 25, 1956, Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama bombed the home of civil rights activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Rev. Shuttlesworth was home at the time of the bombing with his family and two members of Bethel Baptist Church, where he served as pastor. The 16-stick dynamite blast destroyed the home and caused damage to Rev. Shuttlesworth’s church next door but no one inside the home suffered serious injury. White supremacists would attempt to murder Rev. Shuttlesworth four more times in the next seven years. In an attack in 1957, a white mob brutally beat Rev. Shuttlesworth with chains and bats and stabbed his wife after the couple attempted to enroll their daughters in an all-white high school.

Rev. Shuttlesworth became a popular target of white supremacists in the early 1950s after assuming leadership of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama. As founder and president of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, Rev. Shuttlesworth organized and participated in numerous protests and boycotts challenging Jim Crow customs and policies in Birmingham and across the South. The day before the Christmas bombing, Rev. Shuttlesworth had called upon local African Americans to desegregate the city buses starting on December 26. Undeterred by the Klan’s assassination attempt, Rev. Shuttlesworth proceeded as planned with the December 26 protest rides.

Rev. Shuttlesworth was involved in nearly every pivotal civil rights event of the 1960s, including the 1961 Freedom Rides and the Birmingham Children’s Crusade in May 1963. His tireless activism in the face of violent opposition led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to describe him as “the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South.”

After Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955 for refusing a city bus driver’s instruction to relinquish her seat to white passengers, Montgomery, Alabama, activists organized a boycott of city buses to protest the poor treatment of Black passengers. Originally, the bus boycott was to last for a single day, coinciding with Ms. Parks’s civil court appearance. But the boycott turned out to be much more successful than organizers anticipated, with an estimated 17,000 African Americans refusing to ride the buses. Inspired by the community’s enthusiastic response, organizers decided to extend the boycott, and a young Montgomery minister named Martin Luther King Jr. was appointed as spokesman.

Initially, those participating in the bus boycott met only mild resistance; many white citizens offered to drive their Black employees to work to ensure the demonstration would not interfere with their job attendance. However, as the boycott continued and the protesters’ power to leverage their aggregate economic strength became apparent, the response grew violent. The homes of prominent figures associated with the boycott were bombed, including those of Reverend King, NAACP President E.D. Nixon, and Pastor Robert Graetz. Legal harassment also was prevalent, as police jailed more than eighty-nine boycott leaders in an effort to intimidate protestors.

Shortly after the boycott began, organizers filed Browder v. Gayle, a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Montgomery’s segregated buses. The suit worked its way through the courts as the boycott continued, and on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that public bus segregation was unconstitutional and ordered Montgomery buses to integrate. On December 21, 1956, one day after the court’s order was served on the Montgomery bus system, the boycott ended and the city’s Black citizens resumed riding the now-integrated buses.

Excerpted from the Civil Rights Digital Library

On Friday, December 16, police arrested Dr. William G. Anderson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and over 250 demonstrators for marching without a parade permit. Abernathy was bailed out of jail on December 16 so that he could arrange outside support while King and Anderson remained in prison. Negotiations between Albany Movement activists and city officials began on Monday, December 18, and lasted all day; prominent Albany officials, such as mayor Asa D. Kelley and police chief Laurie Pritchett, were included in these discussions. On the table were demands to release jailed activists. Finally, the two groups agreed to release jailed demonstrators on bond and to appoint a biracial committee to further negotiate the demands of the Albany Movement on the condition that King and Abernathy leave the city and that demonstrations stop.

In segments of the clip, Marion Page (Albany Movement Executive Secretary) delivers negotiation results in a prepared public statement to reporters and to attendees of the mass meeting. Page explains that the city police agreed to comply with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ruling that desegregated bus and train stations, and to facilitate bond release for demonstrators. Page clarifies that the Albany Movement will not lead demonstrations or attempt further negotiations until after the new city commission takes office in January. Finally, Page reveals that Chief Pritchett has agreed to accompany him to the year's first city commission meeting and to recommend that the commission give Movement requests full consideration.

While these arrangements were made by the Albany Movement in good faith with city leaders, Albany officials quickly reneged, and announced to the press that no concessions had been made; in response, Albany Movement-led demonstrations resumed in January 1962.

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.

On December 16, 1961, the Negro community of that city made its stride toward freedom. Citizens from every quarter of the community made their moral witness against the system of segregation. They willingly went to jail to create an effective protest.

I too was jailed on charges of parading without a permit, disturbing the peace, and obstructing the sidewalk. I refused to pay the fine and had expected to spend Christmas in jail. I hoped thousands would join me. I didn't come to be arrested. I had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel. But after seeing negotiations break down, I knew I had to stay. My personal reason for being in Albany was to express a personal witness of a situation I felt was very important to me. As I, accompanied by over one hundred spirited Negroes, voluntarily chose jail to bail, the city officials appeared so hardened to all appeals to conscience that the confidence of some of our supporters was shaken. They nervously counted heads and concluded too hastily that the movement was losing momentum.

I shall never forget the experience of seeing women over seventy, teenagers, and middle-aged adults-some with professional degrees in medicine, law, and education, some simple housekeepers and laborers-crowding the cells. This development was an indication that the Negro would not rest until all the barriers of segregation were broken down. The South had to decide whether it would comply with the law of the land or drift into chaos and social stagnation.

One must search for words in an attempt to describe the spirit of enthusiasm and majesty engendered in the next mass meeting, on that night when seven hundred Negro citizens were finally released from prison. Out from the jails came those men and womendoctors, ministers, housewives-all of whom had joined ranks with a gallant student leadership in an exemplary demonstration of nonviolent resistance to segregation.

Before long the merchants were urging a settlement upon the city officials and an agreement was finally wrung from their unwilling hands. That agreement was dishonored and violated by the city. It was inevitable that the sweep of events would see a resumption of the nonviolent movement, and when cases against the seven hundred odd prisoners were not dropped and when the city council refused to negotiate to end discrimination in public places, actions began again.

The Nobel committee awarded King because he was “the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.”

On the morning of December 4, 1969, lawyer Jeffrey Haas received a call from his partner at the People’s Law Office, informing him that early that morning Chicago police had raided the apartment of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago.

Tragically, Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark had both been shot dead, and four other Panthers in the apartment had critical gunshot wounds. Police were uninjured and had fired their guns 90-99 times. In sharp contrast, the Panthers had shot once, from the shotgun held by Mark Clark, which had most likely been fired after Clark had been fatally shot in the heart and was falling to the ground.

Haas went straight to the police station to speak with Hampton’s fiancée, Deborah Johnson, who was then eight months pregnant with Hampton’s son. She had been sleeping in bed next to Hampton when the police attacked and began shooting into the apartment and towards the bedroom where they were sleeping. Miraculously, Johnson had not been shot, but her account given to Haas was chilling. Throughout the assault Hampton had remained unconscious (strong evidence emerged later that a paid FBI informant had given Hampton a sedative that prevented him from waking up) and after police forced Johnson out of the bedroom, two officers entered the room where Hampton still lay unconscious. Johnson heard one officer ask, “Is he still alive?” After two gunshots were fired inside the room, the other officer said, “He’s good and dead now.”

Jeffrey Haas’ account of this conversation with Johnson jumps right out from the inside cover of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. In this excellent book, Haas gives his personal account of defending the Panther survivors of the December 4 police assault against the criminal charges that were later dropped, and of filing a civil rights lawsuit, Hampton v. Hanrahan, on behalf of the survivors and the families of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. [Description from full review by Hans Bennett on TowardsFreedom.com.]

Interview with author Jeffrey Haas on Democracy Now!, includes video of Fred Hampton and overview of the Black Panther Party, December 4, 2009.

On December 1, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress and activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated city bus. Her stand helped to spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which remains one of the most well-known campaigns of the civil rights movement. Less well known, Mrs. Parks's work for racial justice long preceded this courageous act. She was very active in the local chapter of the NAACP ever since joining as the chapter’s only woman member in 1943, and had served as both the youth leader and secretary. Mrs. Parks frequently traveled throughout Alabama to interview Black people who had suffered racial terror, violence, or other injustice. In 1944, she investigated the Abbeville, Alabama, gang-rape of a young Black woman named Recy Taylor, and joined with other civil rights activists to organize a national campaign demanding prosecution of the white men responsible.

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks began her bus ride home from work sitting in the “colored section.” Montgomery’s segregated bus service designated separate seating areas for Black and white passengers; during peak operating hours, if the white seating area became full, the bus driver could expand its boundaries and request that African Americans stand to relinquish their seats to white people. While Black riders were not legally obligated to comply, city bus drivers were notorious for their hostile treatment of Black riders and their requests were rarely refused.

As more white passengers boarded, the bus driver asked Mrs. Parks and three other seated African Americans to give up their seats to white riders. When Mrs. Parks was the only one to refuse, the driver summoned police and she was arrested. Mrs. Parks later recalled that she had refused to stand, not because she was physically tired, but because she was tired of giving in. That same night, Jo Ann Robinson and other local activists began organizing what would become the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A statue of Mrs. Parks was dedicated in Montgomery on December 1, 2019, near the location where she boarded the bus on the day of her arrest.