The arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955 provided the spark
which
ignited the long smouldering resentments of black Montgomerians. For
381 days they waged a boycott of the city bus lines, frustrating the
opposition of white authorities and financially crippling the local transit
company. More profoundly it resulted in a Supreme Court decision
outlawing segregation on public transportation. Equally momentous was
the emergence of the man who would serve as the spiritual figurehead of
the civil rights movement: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott, one national black
newspaper acclaimed King as “Alabama's Modern Moses.”
Since the
darkest days of slavery African-Americans had sought spiritual salvation
by comparing their own condition to that of God's Chosen People, the
Israelites of the Old Testament. Throughout their years of enslavement
they prayed for the Moses who would deliver them from their suffering
unto the Promised Land. During the boycott, the black citizens of
Montgomery had similarly sustained their morale by singing the old slave
spirituals, raising their voices at the nightly mass meetings in rousing
renditions of “Go Down Moses, Way Down in Egypt Land.” “As
sure
as Moses got the children of Israel across the Red Sea,” King exhorted
the
black community, “we can stick together and win.” Others too
drew the
analogy between the historical experience of Jews and the contemporary
predicament of African-Americans. Looking back on the boycott, white
liberal activist Virginia Durr evoked the spectre of Nazi Germany in
describing the strength of racist opposition.
