The Power of We

While we recognize the importance of teamwork with our staff, we often forget how profoundly powerful teamwork can be with other leaders. Let’s look at this collaborative process through a historic example.

The setting. Our nation remembers the Montgomery Bus Boycott as one of the most significant civil rights protests in U.S. history. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a White man, Black Montgomery residents boycotted the city’s buses for 381 days! The protest, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ultimately led to a Supreme Court ruling which declared racial segregation on public buses unconstitutional. What did it take to bring about such a massive project, and how many organizations were involved in this collective triumph?

The real history. In 1943, twelve years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, she had been elected secretary for the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. She very quickly gained the notice of E.D. Nixon, a prominent and well respected NAACP activist. Together, Parks and Nixon worked tirelessly to pursue legal justice for victims of racial violence.

In 1944, a Black woman named Viola White refused to give up her bus seat to a White passenger and was beaten and arrested. The next year, two members of the Women’s Army Corps refused to move and were beaten by the driver. Parks and Nixon documented these and similar incidents and began searching for way to stop these injustices.

In 1946, a Black English professor from Alabama State College formed an activist group called the Women’s Political Council (WPC), whose main objective was to promote Black voter registration through citizenship education. In 1949, Jo Ann Robinson was elected president and shifted the Council’s primary focus to challenging laws that enforced segregated seating on buses. In 1954, after five years of unsuccessful attempts to improve the treatment of Black bus passengers, Robinson and the WPC began laying the groundwork for a city-wide boycott.

While the WPC planned a boycott, Nixon and Parks decided to challenge segregation a different way. Bolstered by the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools, they believed the highest court would also vote to desegregate buses, if only they could get a case before them. So they waited for a plaintiff they believed could endure the lengthy and dangerous process of getting a case to the Supreme Court. In March 1955, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Nixon, however, doubted a high school student could endure the months of harassment, media attention, and death threats that would accompany such a high profile case. Nine months later, when Parks found herself in the unique position of becoming the plaintiff she and Nixon had been waiting for, she didn’t hesitate.

Leadership Paths Converge. Word of Parks’s arrest spread quickly through the Black community. As Parks and Nixon left the jailhouse to prepare for court, Jo Ann Robinson set the WPC’s boycott plan into motion. Gathering in secret, the WPC ladies worked through the night to print 50,000 flyers for a bus boycott to be held in four days’ time—on Monday, the first day of Parks’s trial. The distribution routes for the flyers had been put in place months before, and the only things left to do were deliver the information and organize the participants.

At 3 a.m. on Friday, while her team worked around her, Robinson called Nixon to inform him of the upcoming boycott and ask for any help he could offer. Nixon suggested the boycott would have greater success if pastors on Sunday urged their congregations to participate. At 6 a.m., Nixon called a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., and asked him to help mobilize the church leaders into action. By Friday afternoon, the majority of Black Montgomery citizens had received a WPC flyer, and by Friday evening, Dr. King had secured promises from nearly 50 pastors to urge their congregations to join the boycott. By Sunday morning, support for the boycott was nearly unanimous among Montgomery’s Black citizens.

Deepening the Team. As expected, Monday morning brought a guilty verdict for Parks. Her attorneys, Fred Gray and Charles Langford, immediately filed a petition challenging segregation law as unconstitutional. Believing they could financially pressure the city to  reconsider Parks’s case, Nixon, King and other local leaders formed an organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to support a bus boycott that could last until segregation laws were changed. 

The City of Montgomery immediately moved to limit access to alternative modes of transportation for boycott participants, making it illegal for Black cab drivers to reduce their fares. The MIA then reached out to civic leaders in surrounding states, recruiting them to help organize a massive ride-share cooperative, coordinating more than 20,000 rides per day. Tensions rose as the boycott continued, and when a local White supremacist group bombed Dr. King’s house, civic leaders from across the nation offered help.  

A group of civil rights leaders in New York sent one of the most experienced and successful nonviolent activists, Bayard Rustin, to Montgomery to mentor King in nonviolent strategy. When a grand jury called for the arrest of 115 boycott leaders, Rustin counseled them to dress in their finest clothes and present themselves peacefully at the jailhouse. They followed his advice, and the optics of the arrest garnered national interest, as well as financial support to keep the boycott going indefinitely.

As King and his network of committed leaders worked to continue the boycott, Parks, Nixon, Gray and Langford continued their work to challenge the constitutionality of segregation. When local courts blocked Parks’s case from progressing, Gray and Langford, filed a petition on behalf of five Montgomery women—including Claudette Colvin—who had been arrested for refusing to give up their seats to White passengers. This approach worked, and on December 20, 1956, the Supreme Court issued an order, commanding Montgomery to desegregate its buses.

There is much we can learn from this example. Working in silos, none of the leaders would have had the impact or reach necessary to accomplish their goal. But reaching beyond their limited circles, asking other leaders for help and expertise, this group of remarkable people achieved a tremendous victory for human rights. We can accomplish truly great things, if only we’re willing to work together. 
 
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