Every now and then some folks start talking about the possibilities of a “second Civil War” in these United States. With all due respect, we’ve already had one—it’s called the Civil Rights Movement.
Violence and terror were the ugly heart of segregationist resistance to full citizenship by African-Americans. Montgomery segregationists bombed the houses of Martin Luther King, Jr. and E. D. Nixon. They bombed the houses of Revs. Ralph Abernathy and Robert Graetz. They bombed Bell St., Hutchinson St. and First Baptist Churches.
Segregationists used the threat of violence. Mrs. Parks writes, “Nobody tried to bomb my home, but I did get a lot of threatening telephone calls. They’d say things like, ‘You’re the cause of all this. You should be killed.’ It was frightening to get those calls, and it really bothered me when Mama answered the telephone and it was one of those calls.”
Segregationists used economic violence. “The white people tried to break the boycott by not giving the church cars any insurance. All the churches operated the station wagons, and had their names on the sides. Without insurance, the cars could not operate legally. Every time they got insurance from a new company, the policy would suddenly be canceled.” (The eventual solution to that issue was “Dr. King got in touch with a black insurance agent in Atlanta named T. M. Alexander, and T. M. Alexander got Lloyd’s of London…to write a policy for the church-operated cars.” You’ll notice Alexander didn’t go to national US insurance companies. State Farm wasn’t there. There were no good hands from Allstate.)
“A lot of people lost their jobs because they supported the boycott.” Given that whites controlled the vast majority of the economy in Montgomery (and elsewhere in the US), this was a common and often devastatingly effective tactic of economic violence. Raymond Parks resigned because “Mr. Armstrong, the white owner of the private barbering concession at Maxwell Field Air Force base, issues an order that there was to be no discussion of ‘the bus protest or Rosa Parks in his establishment.’ Parks said he would not work anywhere where his wife’s name could not be mentioned.”
“I was discharged from Montgomery Fair department store in January of 1956, but I was not told by the personnel officer that it was because of the boycott. I do not like to form in my mind an idea that I don’t have any proof of.” Mrs. Parks goes on to provide the facts as she knew them…which leave little doubt that her leadership role in the boycott was precisely the reason for her firing.
While the boycott continued, Rosa Parks took in sewing and worked with the MIA. When the boycott ended, the harassment continued. “The threatening telephone calls continued even after the Supreme Court decision. My husband slept with a gun nearby for a time. Bertha Butler, a close friend of ours in Montgomery, says that my mother would call her some nights and talk for long periods just to jam the lines so the hate calls couldn’t get through for a while. Once, when I was on the street, a white man recognized me and made a hateful remark. My picture had been in the papers, and it was doubtful that I could ever get a regular job in a white business in Montgomery.”
