In 1861, a convention began on Monday, February 4, 1861, when representatives from five southern states met in Montgomery, the host city, for the Southern Convention, to form the Confederate States of America. Montgomery was named the first capital of the nation (The Confederacy) on February 8, 1861.
On, Monday, February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as provisional president on the steps of the State Capitol. The capital was later moved to Richmond, Virginia. On Saturday, February 22, 1862 his provisional status ended.
Davis became President of the Confederate States on Saturday, February 22, 1862. Davis’ presidency ended on Friday, May 5, 1865. The Confederacy ended on Tuesday, May 9, 1865 when President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation declaring armed resistance in the South was virtually at an end. May 9, 1865 is the commonly accepted end date of the American Civil War.
On Wednesday, April 12, 1865, following the Battle of Selma (April 2, 1865), Major General James H. Wilson, known as Wilson’s Raid, was fought in the final full month of the American Civil War, captured Montgomery for the Union.
As the Reconstruction era (began in 1865) ended in 1877, Montgomery mayor W. L. Moses asked the state legislature to gerrymander city boundaries. The state complied and removed the districts where African Americans lived, restoring white supremacy to the city’s demographics and electorate.
This action by the state of Alabama prevented African Americans from being elected in the municipality and denied them city services and their constitutional rights to equal protection under the Equal Protection Clause of the now-active 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as US citizens.
While the Civil War “ended” in 1865, the “ideas” of the Confederacy did not. A long entrenched view of discrimination against African Americans and their civil rights continued to be a barrier separating Black Americans in Montgomery’s city services.
In 1886, Montgomery became the first city in the United States to install citywide electric streetcars along a system that was nicknamed the Lightning Route. Residents followed the streetcar lines to settle in locations with new housing in what was then “suburban” locations.
By 1950, Montgomery was a major center of events and protests in the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott and the Selma to Montgomery marches. The struggle for equality, unity, social justice, diversity, inclusion, and equity was brought to America’s attention in Montgomery.
Even though Black Americans fought in every war to preserve the Union including the Civil War and World War I, federal laws that were enacted to protect them were not being enforced by local officials, state authorities, and the federal government, especially in southern states like Alabama.
In the post-World War II era, many returning African American veterans, after fighting in the war from Asia to Europe, like the Tuskegee Airmen, for the United States, were among those who became active in pushing to regain their full civil rights in the South. Discrimination was on full display in the city when even Black veterans could not ride in their chosen seats on city buses.
They wanted to be allowed to vote and participate in politics, to freely use public spaces and places, and an end to segregation. According to the historian David Beito of the University of Alabama, African Americans in Montgomery fully “nurtured the modern civil rights movement.”
In the early 1950s, as the boundary of Montgomery continued to expand, African Americans needed to travel great distances to work, with many Black women working as domestics. Most jobs for African Americans who did not have their own cars or trucks relied heavily on city buses for rides.
Public transportation was the best way to get to their destination to work and shop. This matrix would make African Americans most of the customers on the city buses, but they were forced to give up seats and even stand in order to make room for white riders who also used buses for work or shopping.
On Thursday, December 1, 1955, discrimination was on full display when an African American woman name Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) rejected a white bus driver’s order to vacate a row of four seats in the “colored” section in favor of a white passenger, once the “white” section was filled.
Rosa Parks was arrested and charged with a crime for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. She was charged for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws.
Though she was not the first Black person to refuse, hers was the pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott (December 5, 1955 – December 20, 1956) that lead to the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit of Browder v. Gayle.
On June 5, 1956, the US District Court ruled 2-1, that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The state and the city of Montgomery appealed, and the decision was summarily affirmed by the United States Supreme Court on November 13, 1956.
On December 21, 1956, Rosa Parks rode on a Montgomery city bus, the day Montgomery’s public transportation system was legally integrated. Riding behind Parks was Nicholas C. Chriss, a UPI reporter who witnessed and covered the event for the press.
On March 7-25, 1965 the Selma to Montgomery march of an estimated 25,000 marchers entered Montgomery, the state capital, to press for voting rights. These actions contributed to Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to authorize federal supervision and enforcement of the rights of African Americans and other minorities to vote.
Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. In 1993, She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame; In 1996, She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, highest award given by the US executive branch.
In 1999, The US Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights” and awarded her the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the US legislative branch, the medal bears the legend “Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement”.
In 2000, the state of Alabama awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor; She received the first Governor’s Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy University in Montgomery was dedicated to her.
On October 30, 2005, President George W. Bush issued a proclamation ordering that all flags on U.S. public areas both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on the day of Parks’ funeral.
In 2005, Parks was honored when the American Public Transportation Association declared December 1, 2005, the 50th anniversary of her arrest, to be a “National Transit Tribute to Rosa Parks Day”.
After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that there was more work to be done in the struggle for justice. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP’s 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
In 2000, Rosa Parks was honored by her home state as she was awarded the Alabama Academy of Honor. She received the first Governor’s Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage.
She was awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide. She was made an honorary member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum on the campus of Troy University in Montgomery was dedicated to her.
In 2002, she received these honors: Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Parks on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. A portion of the Interstate 10 freeway in Los Angeles was named in her honor. She received the Walter P. Reuther Humanitarian Award from Wayne State University.
In 2003, she received this honor: Bus No. 2857, on which Parks was riding, was restored and placed on display in The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
On February 4, 2013, to celebrate Rosa Parks’s 100th birthday, the Henry Ford Museum declared the day a “National Day of Courage” with 12 hours of virtual and on-site activities featuring nationally recognized speakers, musical and dramatic interpretative performances.
Additionally, a panel presentation of “Rosa’s Story” and a reading of the tale “Quiet Strength”. The actual bus on which Rosa Parks sat was made available for the public to board and sit in the seat that Rosa Parks refused to give up.
Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her arrest, December 1.
Downtown Montgomery also contains many state and local government buildings, including the Alabama State Capitol. The Capitol is located atop a hill at one end of Dexter Avenue, along which also lies the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor.
Both the Capitol and Dexter Baptist Church are recognized as National Historic Landmarks. Montgomery’s east side is the fastest-growing part of the city with many attractions. Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts are located on the east side.
