
          The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started
It by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1987. 190 pp. $12.95.)
          By Barak, GreggGregg Barak
          Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, pp. 18, 20
          
          The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started
It is a historically significant contribution to the study of
the civil rights movement. The book establishes the essential
background information on the events leading up to the bus boycott of
1955-56, and also provides an examination of black activism in
Montgomery prior to and during the boycott. [See "Origins of the
Montgomery Bus Boycott" by David Garrow, SOUTHERN
CHANGES, Oct.-Dec. 1985].
          In retelling the story, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson--one of the female
activists who instigated the boycott--takes the reader through the
joys and sorrows of some 50,000 blacks who refused to ride public city
buses until the demeaning, humiliating, and intolerable conditions of
segregation were removed.
          Robinson's memoir provides documentary evidence that it was black
women of the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of mostly
professionally-trained educators, social workers, nurses, and other
community workers, who actually initiated and set into motion the
Montgomery bus boycott, rather than Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., or other ministers and black civic leaders. While
many people were well aware of the debilitating effects of segregation
on blacks and whites alike, it was these women who formed the WPC for
the "purpose of inspiring Negroes to live above mediocrity, to
elevate their thinking, to fight juvenile and adult delinquency, to
register to vote, and in general to improve their status as a
group." And when the time was right and the black population of
Montgomery was ready to stand up against segregation, the WPC was
prepared to act.
          Perhaps more importantly, Robinson's story provides a personal
narrative on the human situation and on the various racial struggles
against injustice, oppression, hatred and violence as these relate to
both the individual and the collective condition.
          In successfully integrating the private and public aspects of a
political struggle, Robinson reveals how she and her associates of the
WPC were conscious that they were "laying their all on the line in
organizing themselves to defeat segregation in the heart of the
Confederacy."
          These women fully understood that by publicly challenging the codes
of segregation exemplified by Montgomery's laws on riding municipal
buses, they were opening themselves up to public ridicule and private
ruin. They also understood that the "double double standard" implicit
in the patriarchal and racial relations of the Old South afforded
black women more opportunities to come forward with their protest than
were available to their more threatening male counterparts. Robinson
declares, "We were 'women power,' organized to cope with any
injustice, no matter what, against the darker sect."
          Robinson's manuscript is as much a sociological and psychological
treatise on race relations and human wills as it is an important
historical work. In offering a first-hand account of racial inequality
under siege, Robinson gets inside the pained psyches of black men,
women, and children who were constantly under all forms of physical,
verbal, and emotional assault at the hands of the dominant white
culture. With ease and passion, she communicates the calm as well as
the exhilaration of well-organized Southern blacks who, with
determination, self-sacrifice, and discipline--and with the assistance
of people attracted to their cause throughout the nation and the
world--were able to turn back the legalized bigotry of the South.
          Robinson demonstrates her profound insight into the human condition
when she is able to relate the personal ambivalence of both blacks and
whites toward the struggle. But what I found particularly impressive
was her ability to avoid vilifying her adversaries. She evokes a
sympathetic, even empathetic appreciation of the plights of the
seemingly unlikely coalition of Southern white gentlemen, illiterates,
"ne'er-do-wells," and others "disappointed in life" who came together
to form the White Citizens' Council. The text vividly depicts the
feelings and attitudes of the black experience while also exploring
the varied white reactions.
          Among the many interesting reflections in THE MONTGOMERY BUS
BOYCOTT, there are three that particularly illustrate Robinson's
perceptive analysis of race and social change. First is her discussion
of how a lack of social self-esteem caused by racism may increase the
incidences of intraspecific crime and deviance, especially those acts
involved in domestic violence. On the other hand, she points out how
the humiliating experiences of racism and the associated deviant
behavior may actually be reduced through organized community action
for civil rights. Not only are these astute observations on the
relationships between crime and racism similar to those made by Franz
Fanon in his classic analysis of race and colonialism in The Wretched
of the Earth, but they have also been verified in social science
literature as far back as 1965.
          Second is Robinson's portrayal of the politically sensitive covert
role played by Alabama State College in the movement to end busing
discrimination. As a predominantly black institution--the only
four-year public college or university in Montgomery before the
sixties--Alabama State had to maintain a low public profile while
actively participating in the boycott.
          In the sixties, when integration was court-ordered in Alabama's
public universities and colleges, branch campuses of Auburn University
and Troy State University were established in Montgomery to provide
the city with "white campuses" and to circumvent racial integration on
any terms other than white majority. Today, Alabama State remains
almost exclusively black, and the three university 

systems along with
others have been involved for several years in a federal lawsuit over
charges that Alabama maintains a racially segregated system of higher
education. Until such time as the several public university systems
are integrated into a statewide university system, and until such time
as the legacies of institutional segregation are eliminated, the
political roles played by members of the ASU community will remain
highly sensitive ones.
          Third is Robinson's treatment of the contradictory legal battles of
the boycott, in which white and black leaders found themselves to be
both accused and accusing. In describing the get-tough policies of the
city administration, the harassment of the boycotters, and the
indictments and arrests of 115 black leaders for committing the
misdemeanor crime of "conspiring to boycott" which resulted in the
lone prosecution and conviction of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Robinson reveals how boycotters' consciousness of the political and
constitutional implications of their actions contributed to the
dialectic that enabled the "powerless" to prevail, in this instance,
over the "powers that be."
          Robinson has written a truly remarkable book that will be cited by
historians for generations to come. But more important, her story
about love and hate deserves the attention of all people. Especially
in today's racially tense America, this book should not only be widely
adopted in high schools and colleges, but it should be made into a
film or video production. For this story needs constant telling, not
for the purpose of condemning the discriminators per se, but to remind
people that the struggles for justice--racial, economic, and
political--continue.
          
            Gregg Barak is chair of the Department of Criminal
Justice at Alabama State University. He also serves as book review
editor for CRIME AND SOCIAL JUSTICE and is the author
of IN DEFENSE OF WHOM? A CRITIQUE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
REFORM.
          
        