Today I want to talk about a film called Boycott. December 1, 1955, In Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa is arrested for violating segregation laws and fined $10 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. The government’s move was met with strong resistance from the local black people. Black leaders led a series of civil rights movements by black people, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who was imprisoned. November 13, 1956, The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Montgomery’s racial segregation laws are illegal. The 381 days of the boycott ended with victory. Blacks were allowed to ride the buses as equally as whites. It was also the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.
In the middle of the 20th century, racial discrimination in the United States was at its most serious. The most serious manifestation of racial discrimination was that blacks and whites had their own fixed seats when taking buses, and blacks could not sit with whites. If the bus was full, a black man had to give up his seat to a white man, and if he refused to take the seat, he could even be punished by law. At that time, black people were even classified as second-class citizens by law, which shows that the status of black people at that time was very, very low. So in such a big environment, Rosa’s resistance seems very valuable. Martin Luther King was a very famous leader of the black civil rights movement. We’ve seen some of his work this semester. During the boycott, Bead Latins had suggested to Martin Luther King to establish a civil rights organization in the South to unite various protest forces and advance the civil rights movement in the South. In August 1957, Martin Luther King invited 115 Southern black leaders to a meeting in Montgomery to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and King was elected president. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s arrest for vagrancy was also filmed. But a popular boycott forced him to let him go. After his release from prison, Martin Luther King visited and studied India for a month, confirming his belief in nonviolent resistance.
The whole film fully embodies the racial discrimination and unfair treatment suffered by the black people in the mid-19th century, as well as how the black people carried out the civil rights movement step by step, defended their rights and finally won. The film has a profound educational significance, worth all to experience the history
Reference：
https://baike.baidu.com/item/联合抵制/3365134?fr=aladdin
https://movie.douban.com/subject/2131318/
https://baike.baidu.com/item/马丁·路德·金/456?fromtitle=马丁路德金&fromid=513902&fr=aladdin