The African American Museum in Philadelphia will focus in on one of the most pivotal moments in American history with the 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story. This traveling exhibit chronicles the heroic stand of Rosa Parks through her arrest and the bus boycott that followed. Developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) in collaboration with the Troy University Rosa Parks Library and Museum, and generously underwritten by AARP, the exhibit explores these crucial, historic events, which ignited the national Civil Rights Movement.
Parks’ arrest on Dec. 1, 1955, the catalyst for Montgomery’s citizens to take action, is only a fraction of the story. 381 Days examines the contributions and dedication of Montgomery’s black community, which made the boycott successful. Four days after Parks’ arrest, 50,000 people united for a one-day boycott of city buses. Following its massive success, organizers formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young Martin Luther King Jr. as its president, and devised a strategy of grassroots organization and legal challenges that eventually broke the city’s ability to maintain segregated buses after 380 more days of the boycott.
“The installation of 381 Days helps to round out the overall experience here at AAMP”, commented AAMP President & CEO Romona Riscoe Benson. “Our core exhibition Audacious Freedom provides insight into what was essentially our nation’s first civil rights movement. 381 Days expands that experience from a modern day perspective. Additionally we will add a local focus to the exhibit with the inclusion of photos by Philadelphia native Jack T. Franklin, one of the nation’s most prolific photographers of the civil rights struggle in America.”
Through a modernist collage of photographs, political cartoons, contemporary writings, and other text and images, 381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story bears witness to a challenge met. The challenges of a people—black and forward-thinking whites, young and old—joined in boycott by hope, by courage, by self-respect. In its wake, the tenets of a nonviolent approach to political and social change matured into a weapon of equality for all Americans, no matter race, color, or gender. 381 Days examines the impact of the boycott’s success across the country and around the world. In November 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Montgomery’s segregated bus seating unconstitutional. The boycott ended once the ruling took effect. As the first major victory against legalized segregation, the strategies used in Montgomery were adapted by a new generation of activists dedicated to nonviolent protest.
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