SY J - Fall 2016
Shakti Yogi Journal - Issue #12
Shakti Yogi Journal
Special Report
Jaya
Your right
to say No:
A short History
of the American
Boycott
By: Lauren Maslen
Photos by: Shaunti LallyiAm
Like most children growing up in the United States,
I was told lies about the world around me. My
parents, teachers and school curriculum spread thinly
veiled misinformation about the country I lived in, its
government, its history, its people and the way society
“worked.” Perhaps they thought the truth was too
complex for our young minds. Perhaps they didn’t
want us to ask too many questions. Or, perhaps many
didn’t know the truth themselves. ‘The government is
here to protect you. Everyone at school is your friend.
He’s being mean to you because he likes you. No, the
chicken was never alive. Just eat it!’ Maybe the sugar
coated version of the truth was simply meant to keep us
feeling safe?
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Shakti Yogi Journal - Issue #12
SY J - Fall 2016
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
The truth was never fully sheathed in secrecy, rather it was
severely distorted. Rosa Parks was not simply fatigued that
day. She was well-worn and fed up with society’s bullshit.
And she was ready to evoke change, so she said in her 1992
autobiography, “My Story”:
Parks was an active and devoted member of the NAACP
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
In fact, she was head of the NAACP’s Youth Council; a secretary to NAACP’s Montgomery chapter president
E.D. Nixon; and she was elected State Secretary of Alabama’s NAACP in 1948. Prior to her arrest, she attended
civil rights and disobedience workshops in the region, and gave public speeches in Atlanta, Washington, D.C.
and Jacksonville. She rubbed elbows with fellow civil rights activists and powerful leaders around the U.S.
including Fred Gray, the lawyer who would come to legally represent her and MLK Jr.; Jo Ann Robinson,
a leader of the Women’s Political Council (WPC); and Clifford and Virginia Durr, Montgomery Alabama’s
leading white liberal activists. So, on that fateful first day of December, 1955, Parks had not merely found
herself in the wrong place at the wrong time; she had tailored herself to be precisely that woman on that bus.
[1]
After the arrest, E.D. Nixon and the Durrs bailed Parks out of jail while the WPC handed out tens of thousands
of leaflets, asking people to stay off the Montgomery city buses. Nixon contacted Dr. King Jr. to alert him of the
impending boycott and asking him to assist in further strategic planning.
THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
THE FORMATIVE YEARS
I attended a private Catholic school in upstate New York until grade four. It was not unlike the secular public
school I attended from grades 4-7 in South Carolina. Both taught me and my classmates about civil rights. We
learned about Rosa Parks and her brave stance against the country’s racial segregation laws. Parks catalysed the
Civil Rights Movement, we were taught. That much held true, despite the otherwise banal and details.
I was told during these formative years that, on that fateful day the changed American history, Parks was simply
too tired to move from her seat on the bus. She had been working all day and her feet were sore. She worked hard
as a seamstress. She was pooped. She had finally gotten a chance to sit down and couldn’t be bothered to move
when she was just that tired.
This is one of the most blasphemous lies I was told as a child: that a woman’s apathy inspired the momentous
boycott of the Montgomery Alabama bus system; that her exhaustion was the spark that ignited the Civil Rights
Movement. There is something fervently critical to be said about our education system for the fact that my young
classmates and I were spooned the ignoble untruth that a tired, disinterested woman said “no,” was arrested, wrote
a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so changed history.
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This Bus Boycott is one of the most well-regarded in history. According to Stanford University’s Martin
Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, on December 5, 1955, “90 percent of Montgomery’s black
citizens stayed off the buses.” The boycott lasted 381 days and concluded with the Supreme Court ruling bus
segregation to be unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle. After the court rejected appeals to the decision in
December of 1956, King and his organizers urged boycotters to ride the newly non-segregated buses. However,
boycotting was not a legal practice in Alabama at the time: according to the Stanford’s King Institute, in
February, 1956, “King and 89 others violated a 1921 statute that outlawed boycotts against businesses.” [5] King
was found guilty of anti-boycott laws and sentenced to a $500 fine or 386 days in jail. He chose the jail sentence,
two weeks of which he served. King’s arrest and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became national news. [7]
According to Brayden King, a management professor at Northwestern University who has studied the
reputational threat of boycotted businesses based on 221 social movement boycotts, any amount of media
attention can make an impact. [6]
“If you look at all boycotts that have received some minimal national media attention, about 25 percent of those
boycotts lead to some sort of public concession on the firm’s part,” Professor King recently told Freakonomics
Radio host Stephen J. Dubner. Companies that are targeted by boycotts tend to modify their behavior, making
“prosocial claims” or tending towards “prosocial behavior,” King explained. [3]
That certainly held true once MLK Jr.’s work with the Montgomery Bus Boycott started gaining steam. For
others, including the United Farm Workers Association (UFWA) and their grape boycott of the 1960s, led by
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Jaya
I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at
the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people
have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No, the only
tired I was, was tired of giving in. [4]
SY J - Fall 2016
Cesar Chavez, public concession was hard-won. After
a messy five-year boycott of table grapes, particularly
those specifically sold by conglomerate grocery chains
like Safeway and Kroger, union contracts for farm
workers were signed in 1970. The boycott involved
years of fighting for fair wages and benefits, and nonviolent protests against multi-million dollar public
relations campaigns funded by the supermarket chains
and the Department of Defense, who nearly doubled
the shipment of grapes sent to troops overseas during
the Vietnam War. Eventually, the boycott garnered
supporters in every major North American distribution
city, including Toronto, and the producers and retailers
caved. Today, the grapes we see in supermarkets are a
product of contracts between growers and the UFWA.
[2]
EMPOWERED HUMANS
REFERENCES:
[1] Schmitz, Paul. “How Change Happens: The Real Story of Mrs. Rosa Parks & The Montgomery Bus Boycott” Huffington Post. 1
December 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-schmitz/how-change-happens-the-re_b_6237544.html
[2] Ferris, Susan, Ricardo Sandoval and Diana Hembree. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. 1997
Paradigm Productions, Inc. 155.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EbSIYtHFhcwC&lpg=PA148&ots=wMTLRmIclz&dq=grape%20boycott%20safeway%20kroger&pg
=PA155#v=onepage&q=grape%20boycott%20safeway%20kroger&f=false
[3] Dunbar, Stephen J. “Do Boycotts Work?” Freakonomics. 21 January 2016. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-boycotts-work-anew-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
[4] Crawford, Hillary E. “8 Memorable Rosa Parks Quotes That Remain As Potent Today As Ever.” Bustle. 1 December 2015. http://www.
bustle.com/articles/126792-8-memorable-rosa-parks-quotes-that-remain-as-potent-today-as-ever
[5] “State of Alabama V. M. L. King, Jr. (1956 and 1960)” http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_state_of_
alabama_v_m_l_king_jr_1956_and_1960/
Humans are creatures of habit. We are highly social,
mutually dependent creatures who thrive on familiar
connection. We also like things to be easy. We don’t
change unless we need to, until we are pushed by
some impetus. Most refuse to modulate their behavior
until something is inadmissibly wrong, until we
get sick of our own bullshit, or the bullshit we are
allowing to transpire. For me, that meant saying no to
products produced with palm oil, which supports the
destruction of critical forest habitats home to several
endangered species. It meant saying no to animal
cruelty. It meant emailing my congressmen and women
about the injustices I see in my community. Shakti Yogi
Journal gives readers news and resources so we as a
human community can be aware of what we are saying
yes to. [6] King, Brayden and Mary-Hunter McDonnell. “Keeping up Appearances Reputational Threat and Impression Management after
Social Movement Boycotts” Administrative Science Quarterly. September 2013. vol. 58 no. 3. 387-419. http://asq.sagepub.com/
content/58/3/387.abstract
There is immense power in saying no to the things we
find wrong with the world, whether it’s to your boss;
your parents; the ex who won’t stop texting at 1 a.m.;
the corporations who seek egregious profits regardless
of the wrongdoings and crimes they may commit to get
there.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoycott_KFC.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mercyforanimals/3724984280/in/photolist-6Faw3U-4Xwsv2/
A solid “no” is not always as easy to say as we’d like it to
be, especially in the face of opposition. It’s not a word
we’ve been taught to use lightly. Rosa Parks proved that.
The UFWA proved that. And contrary to the folklore
my American education taught me to believe, Parks
was no meek or modest woman who uttered a quiet
negation and languidly accepted arrested. Instead,
Parks educated herself. She became deeply involved in
her community, and she networked with tact and ardor.
She worked day and night in the face of adversity so
that, when her time came to say “no,” she could make it
count.
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Jaya
[7] Oster, Grant. “Montgomery Bus Boycott” Hankering for History. 10 July 2012. http://hankeringforhistory.com/montgomery-busboycott-2/
TAKE ACTION!
Grape Boycott:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGRAPE-LETTUCE_BOYCOTTERS_PICKET_THE_JEWEL_FOOD_STORE_-_
NARA_-_551938.jpg
https://flic.kr/p/dwvz77
https://flic.kr/p/dwvzaw
KFC Boycott:
Lauren Maslen is a communications coach, writer, and yogi
living in the Pacific Northwest. She usually spends her free
time discussing the absurdities of American politics or thinking
about where she’ll travel next.
Read more from Lauren at
www.LaurenMaslen.com
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