Stride Toward Freedom

Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King, Jr. was published in 1958. This work is a memoir written about King’s experience with the Montgomery Bus Boycott that took place from 1955 to 1956. King summarizes his memoir on page 9 as: “the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.” Important themes of this memoir include nonviolence and civil rights, both of which were pillars in King’s leadership.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 1, 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, as dictated by segregation laws. The boycott was coordinated by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), under King’s leadership as president. The boycott lasted thirteen months, ending when the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. King’s memoir discusses not only the events of those thirteen months, but the roots of civil rights issues that came before 1955.

In 1946, the Womens’ Political Council, or WPC, was founded. This organization of black professionals sought to change the way Jim Crow laws affected Montgomery city bus transportation. In 1954, the WPC met with Mayor W.A. Gayle to request that changes to the bus system be made. One of the changes the organization wanted to affect was the rule that black people had to pay at the front of the bus, even though they had to enter and sit at the rear. The WPC also wanted the buses to provide equal bus stop access in black residential areas as they did in white residential areas. When this meeting didn’t offer any change, Jo Ann Robinson, the president of the WBC, wrote a letter to the mayor stating that a bus boycott was planned.



A year passed after that meeting with the Mayor, and Claudette Colvin was arrested because she challenged segregation on a bus. Then, Mary Louise Smith was arrested because she wouldn’t give up her seat to a white person. It wasn’t until Rosa Parks was arrested that the bus boycott took place. King attributes this in Stride Toward Freedom to Parks’ “impeccable” character and “deep-rooted” dedication. After Parks was arrested, the WPC called for a one-day boycott in protest. Meanwhile, the NAACP contacted leaders like King to broaden awareness of the boycott.

The boycott was scheduled for December 5, and on that day, ninety percent of black citizens in the city of Montgomery refused to ride the buses. Due to this success, leaders met to form the MIA and extend the boycott. Three days later, on December 8, the MIA submitted a list of demands that included first-come, first-served seating, among other requests. Because demands remained unmet, black residents continued to avoid Montgomery buses for the rest of 1956.

The city didn’t just accept this. To punish black taxi drivers who gave rides to boycotters, the city began to penalize them. But the MIA formed a carpool that the city couldn’t touch. This carpool system utilized about three hundred cars. King’s home was bombed during the boycott, but thankfully, he and his family were uninjured. The city relied on a 1921 law that prohibited conspiracies affecting lawful business to indict 80 leaders of the boycott in February of 1956. King himself was ordered to either pay a fine of five hundred dollars or be imprisoned for 386 days. Still, the boycott didn’t fold. In Stride Toward Freedom, King highlights the important role women played in the boycott, from known individuals like Parks and Robinson to a grandmother who wanted to boycott for the benefit of her grandchildren (King 78).



Because of publicity the boycott received, support poured in from outside Montgomery. Proponents of Ghandian tactics (nonviolent protest) wrote to show support to the MIA and raised funds to keep the boycott going. Finally, on June 5, 1956, in Browder v. Gayle, bus segregation was ruled unconstitutional. The Supreme Court confirmed the ruling in November of that year. The boycott finally ended on December 20, 1956, and buses in Montgomery were indicated. King received recognition because of the boycott that allowed him to spread his ideas of Christian morals and nonviolent protest throughout the South, for pursuit of Civil Rights.

In Stride Toward Freedom, King highlights the racial divide before, during, and after the boycott. In addition to Ghandi, King discusses how Marx, Aristotle, Thoreau, and Rauschenbusch influenced him and his actions during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Both the public and circle of critics alike received Stride Toward Freedom with positive reviews. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued his nonviolent fight for civil rights until he was assassinated in 1968. He is famous not only for his leadership during the Civil Rights movement, but for many of his speeches and writings during and surrounding that moment, such as his “I Have a Dream” speech.