Use the outline on the following page to help
you answer question #7 on p.133.
I have included my example. Please write your
OWN responses. Thank you.
“Montgomery Boycott” by Coretta Scott King
Motivations of protesters
1. the blacks were motivated by the segregated seating on the buses and the
mistreatment by the drivers and white passengers
Evidence of MOTIVATION from the story
1. blacks had to pay their fares at the front of the bus, get off, and walk to the
rear door to board again
2. drivers driving away while the black passengers were walking to the rear
entrance to the bus,
3. drivers calling the black passengers terrible names, and
4. drivers forcing black passengers to give up their seats so that white people
could sit there
Actions of the protesters
1. they boycotted the buses
Evidence of Actions
1. No one on the bus 2. Unanimous vote
3. walkers, rode mules, carpooled, etc.
“Sit-Ins” (poem) by Margaret Walker
Motivations of the protestors
1. Blacks were motivated by not being allowed to sit at the lunch counters in
restaurants in the South
Evidence of MOTIVATIONS of protesters
1. Blacks had to sit in a specially marked “colored section” of the restaurant
Actions of the protesters
1. black people (young adults mostly) sat at the lunch counters waiting to be
served
2. When they were not served, they didn’t leave, but would remain seated.
3. If they were mistreated—verbally or physically—they would not fight back
Evidence from the poem
1. “our first brave ones”
2. “the first to blaze a flaming path for justice.”
3. “willingness to suffer”
4. l.8
Both Coretta Scott King and Margaret Walker explore the motivations and actions of
Civil Rights protesters in their respective selections, “Montgomery Boycott” and “Sit-Ins.”
In her memoir, “Montgomery Boycott,” Coretta Scott King tells about how her
husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became president of the Montgomery
Improvement Association, and led the black people of Montgomery in a boycott of the
city’s buses. The story shows how the blacks were motivated by the segregated seating
on the buses and the mistreatment by the drivers and white passengers. Mrs. King
writes, “…blacks had to pay their fares at the front of the bus, get off, and walk to the
rear door to board again.” She also tells of drivers driving away while the black
passengers were walking to the rear entrance to the bus, drivers calling the black
passengers terrible names, and drivers forcing black passengers to give up their seats so
that white people could sit there. Fed up with this unfair treatment, and sparked by
Rosa Parks’s brave refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, the blacks of
Montgomery organized and participated in a boycott of the city buses. Mrs. King
remembers that first day of the boycott, “There was not one person on that usually
crowded bus.” For a year, blacks in Montgomery, Alabama walked or found other
modes of transportation—carpools, taxis, even mules--until segregation on the city
buses was banned.
Like the bus boycotters, young black people across the South protested
segregation and unfair treatment of blacks in other ways. One form of peaceful protest
was the sit-in. Restaurants in the South were notorious for not allowing blacks to sit at
their counters to dine, but rather black diners had to sit in a specially marked “colored
section” of the restaurant. In protest, people--black and white—usually teenagers and
college-aged—would enter these restaurants, sit at the counter and ask to be served.
When they were not, the young people remained seated, not wavering from their
mission. Often they were verbally and physically abused and eventually dragged from
their seats and put in jail. The poem “Sit-Ins” by Margaret Walker hails the heroism of
these young people. She calls them “our first brave ones” and praises them for being
“the first to blaze a flaming path for justice.”