of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955. The boycott began when Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. Her arrest resulted in a series of meetings of blacks in Montgomery and a boycott of buses on which racial segregation was practiced. The boycott, which lasted for more than a year, was almost 100 percent effective. Before the courts declared unconstitutional Montgomery's law requiring segregation on buses, Martin Luther KING, Jr., a Baptist minister, had risen to national prominence and had articulated a strategy of non-violent direct action in the movement for CIVIL RIGHTS. Culture Today Blacks in the United States today are mainly an urban people. Their shift from the rural South to cities of the North and West during the 20th century constitutes one of the major migrations of people in U.S. history. This enormous shift of population has put severe strains on the fabric and social structure within both the old and new communities of migrating blacks. If one adds to this the problems of low income, high unemployment, poor education, and other problems related to racial discrimination, it could be said that the black community in the 20th century has existed in a perpetual state of crisis. The black community, however, has developed a number of distinctive cultural features that black Americans increasingly look upon with pride. Many of these features reflect the influence of cultural traditions that originated in Africa; others reflect the uniqueness of the black American in the United States. The unique features of black American culture are most noticeable in music, art and literature, and religion. They may also exist in speech, extended family arrangements, dress, and other features of life-style. Whether African ancestry or survival in the hostile environment of slavery and Jim Crow was more important in shaping existing cultural patterns of black American life is a question tha...
