“The Onward March of a People Who Desire to Be Totally Free”: The 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott

Catsam, Derek Charles

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94872-0_8

Derek Charles Catsam³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism ((PCSAR))

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Abstract

In 1953, black citizens of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, undertook a boycott against the city’s bus company after the Baton Rouge City-Parish Council voted to raise the fares on municipal buses by 50%. The boycott only lasted a few days and in the minds of many locals was only a partial success. Nonetheless, the action drew the attention of outsiders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who would use the 1953 events in Baton Rouge as a template for the more expansive and comprehensive Montgomery Bus Boycott a few years later. This chapter tells the story of the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott and reveals the dynamics at work in the protest.

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Notes

1.
Much of what follows owes a great debt to the following: The Louisiana Weekly, an African-American newspaper published in New Orleans, particularly issues from June–August 1953; LSU Library Special Exhibit, “The Baton Rouge Bus Boycott of 1953 … A Recaptured Past,” available at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/e-exhibits/boycott/ (accessed 3 October 2011); Louisiana Public Television, Signpost to Freedom: The 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott, (2009); Theodore Judson Jemison, Sr., The T. J. Jemison Story, (Nashville, 1994); Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York, 1984), 17–25; Shannon Frystak, Our Minds on Freedom: Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana, 1924–1967 (Baton Rouge, 2009), 62–69; Christina Melton, ‘‘We’ll Keep Walking!’: The Baton Rouge Civil Rights Boycott of 1953,’ Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, (Spring 2007), 62–71; August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience (Urbana, 1976), 365–366. For a historiographical perspective on the African American experience in Louisiana, see Charles Vincent, ‘‘Of Such Historical Importance …’: The African American Experience in Louisiana,’ Louisiana History, vol. 50, (Spring 2009), 138–158. See also Michael G. Wade, ‘Does Louisiana’s Past Have a Future?: The Challenge of the Present,’ Louisiana History, vol. 50, (Spring 2009), 389–406.
2.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
3.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 65.
4.
Frank Etheridge, “Bus Stop,” Gambit Weekly, June 17, 2003.
5.
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 19.
6.
Jemison, The T. J. Jemison Story, 37.
7.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
8.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 65.
9.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 68.
10.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
11.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 68; LPB Signpost to Freedom.
12.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” pp. 68–69.
13.
Alexis Alexander, “Baton Rouge bus boycott,” The Southern Digest, online edition, February 25, 2005; See also Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Signpost to Freedom.
14.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
15.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 69.
16.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
17.
State Times, June 17, 1953. Also quoted in Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 69.
18.
State Times, June 17, 1953. See also Frystak, Our Minds on Freedom, 64–65.
19.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953; New York Times, June 21, 1953.
20.
Frystak, Our Minds on Freedom, 65.
21.
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 21–22.
22.
Jemison, The T. J. Jemison Story, 38.
23.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
24.
LPB, Signpost to Freedom.
25.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 68.
26.
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 20.
27.
Ibid., 20–21.
28.
Ibid., 21.
29.
Ibid., p. 22.
30.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” accessed at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
33.
Jemison, The T. J. Jemison Story, 39.
34.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” accessed at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
35.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” pp. 65–66; LPB Signpost to Freedom.
36.
Aldon Moris points out that Jemison’s church could only hold about 1000 people and that at the high school, “which normally seated about 1200 … on those hot June nights, 2500–3000 people would wedge themselves into the auditorium, and according to Jemison they stood around the walls, sat on window sills, and occupied all available space.” Furthermore, “Bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to the mass meetings tied up the town of Baton Rouge.” Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 18.
37.
Lottie L. Joiner, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott Paved Way for King’s Montgomery Effort,” The Crisis, (July/August 2003), 7.
38.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” accessed at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
39.
For the best treatment on the role of women in the Baton Rouge boycott, see Frystak, Our Minds Set on Freedom, 62–69, passim. See also Frystak, ‘Louisiana Women and the Black Struggle for Equality, 1924–1968,’ in: Louisiana Beyond Black & White: New Interpretations of Twentieth-Century Race and Race Relations, ed. Michael S. Martin, (Lafayette, 2011), 125–144.
40.
Jemison, The T. J. Jemison Story, 39.
41.
Quoted in Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 19.
42.
Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Exhibits, “Baton Rouge Bus Boycott: The People,” accessed at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/special/exhibits/boycott/thepeople.html, accessed July 23, 2009.
43.
There is a growing literature on self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement. See, for example, Christopher B. Strain, Pure Fire: Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era (Athens, 2005) and Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill, 2006); Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill, 1999); Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (New York, 2013); and Charles E. Cobb, Jr. This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (New York, 2014).
44.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953. On fundraising for the boycott see Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 23–24.
45.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
46.
LPB Signpost to Freedom.
47.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
48.
Ibid., p. 70.
49.
Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 24.
50.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 63.
51.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
52.
Louisiana Weekly, August 15, 1953.
53.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
54.
Ibid., p. 70.
55.
Etheridge, “Bus Stop.”
56.
Ibid.
57.
Ibid.
58.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
59.
Ibid.
60.
Etheridge, “Bus Stop.”
61.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 70.
62.
Etheridge, “Bus Stop.”
63.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 71.
64.
Louisiana Weekly, June 27, 1953.
65.
Jemison, The T. J. Jemison Story, 39–41.
66.
Melton, “‘We’ll Keep Walking’,” p. 63.
67.
LPB Signpost to Freedom.

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University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa, TX, USA
Derek Charles Catsam

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Derek Charles Catsam
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Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck College – University of London, London, UK
David Feldman

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Catsam, D.C. (2019). “The Onward March of a People Who Desire to Be Totally Free”: The 1953 Baton Rouge Bus Boycott. In: Feldman, D. (eds) Boycotts Past and Present. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94872-0_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94872-0_8
Published: 30 December 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94871-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94872-0
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