PROTESTING THE LAW

LOCAL LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION

On the 22nd March 1956 Martin Luther King was found guilty of a misdemeanour in the Circuit Court of Montgomery Alabama, Judge Eugene W. Carter presiding. He was sentenced the same day with a fine of $500 plus court costs of $500.

On 21 February 1956 King was indicted by the Montgomery County Grand Jury for his boycott of the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. According to the State of Alabama, King and 89 others violated a 1921 statute that outlawed boycotts against businesses. During the four-day trial, which began on 19 March 1956, eight lawyers, led by local attorney Fred Gray, defended King by presenting the evils of bus segregation and the abuse that Montgomery blacks had suffered for years from Montgomery bus drivers. Thirty-one witnesses testified to the harassment they had suffered while riding the city buses. Stella Brooks revealed that she stopped riding the buses in 1950, after her husband was killed by Montgomery police. According to Brooks, her husband was shot after demanding a fare refund following a confrontation with the bus driver.

Rather than pay the fine, King chose to appeal the verdict, and the sentence was converted to 386 days of jail time. Responding to the verdict, King said: ‘‘I was optimistic enough to hope for the best but realistic enough to prepare for the worst. This will not mar or diminish in any way my interest in the protest. We will continue to protest in the same spirit of nonviolence and passive resistance, using the weapon of love’’ (Phillips, ‘‘Negro Minister Convicted’’). Outside the courthouse, King was greeted by a crowd of 300 cheering supporters. The Court of Appeals rejected King’s appeal on 30 April 1957, maintaining that his lawyers missed the 60-day deadline. King paid the fine in December 1957.

The bus boycott was started as a result of the arrest of Ms Rosa Parks who was found guilty of taking the wrong seat on a bus, in that she did "violate Chapter 1, section 8 of the code of the City of Montgomery Alabama 1952, in that in violation of the General Acts of Alabama of 1947, page 40,  approved July 18, 1947, she did wilfully refuse or fail to comply with the assignment or reassignment by the officer or agent in charge of a motor vehicle  transporting passengers for hire for hire, of a passenger to a division, section or seat on such vehicle designated by such officer or agent for the race to which such passenger belonged". In other words she refused to sit where the bus driver told her to sit.

That same Judge Eugene W. Carter heard Ms Parks appeal against conviction. He appeal claimed that the Alabama Codes were (1) unconstitutional in that they violated Article 1. Section one of the constitution of the State of Alabama, (2) they violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (3) that they violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the US as the applied to Ms. Parks (4) that they are unconstitutional in that they violate section 1981 of the United States Code.

The appeal was dismissed in classic Southern fashion 

So Southern State laws had supremacy over Federal Law in the 1950's,  despite a Civil War having been fought over the issue. So how does one protest discriminatory laws? How does one protest without getting arrested? How does one protest without getting beaten? How does one use the rule of law to deal with bad law? King was killed for it. Rosa Parks managed to survive and got a congressional medal for it. 

After Martin Luther King's trial on 22nd March 1956 Sol Diamond, vice president and treasurer of Diamond Brothers in Trenton, New Jersey, sent a telegram to Judge Eugene W. Carter, cancelling plans to build a furniture manufacturing plant in Alabama. Sone things matter to some people.