Tallahassee Bus Boycott

Tallahassee Bus Boycott. Tallahassee - Leon County Civil Rights Heritage Walk. On May 28, 1956, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson refused to move to the back of a crowded bus. What started off as a shopping excursion by these two Florida A&M University (FAMU) students turned into a trip to the city jail where police charged them with "placing themselves in a position to incite a riot.” The next night they found a cross burning outside their home. Outraged, FAMU students quickly decided to boycott the city's buses for the remainder of the semester. They did this fully aware of the on-going bus boycott in Montgomery. Members of Tallahassee's African American community soon joined the students and, through the newly formed Inter-Civic Council (ICC), widened the protest into a city-wide boycott. Led by Reverend C.K Steele, the ICC demanded that all passengers be allowed to sit wherever they chose, receive courteous treatment, and that blacks be hired as bus drivers. The ICE appealed for moral justice. In order to make the boycott feasible, ICC organized carpools that the city soon attempted to quash through various legal and extralegal means. Despite intimidation tactics, which included a march by the Ku KIux Klan down Tennessee Street past Steel’s parsonage, thousands of African Americans persisted in refusing to ride the city's buses. On November 13, 1956, U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional. A month later, on December 23, the ICC voted to officially end the boycott. Despite Tallahassee's city commissioners continued resistance to desegregation, bus drivers quietly ignored everyday challenges to the city’s ordinances. The bus boycott in Tallahassee demonstrated to the world that the events in Montgomery were not an aberration. It also confirmed the value of using nonviolent action to assail injustices and inequality.