"Victory Based on Violence Is Undesirable": The Little Rock Bus Strike of 1955-1956

Abstract

THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS, in the 1950s was without a doubt the desegregation of Central High School. The political drama and violence inspired by nine African-American students' effort to integrate the school has inspired many theses, articles, and books. The national media attention to the events of September 1957 clearly overshadowed an episode that took place two years before in Little Rock and North Little Rock that also involved its share of drama and violence but received only brief, local coverage. While the earlier events had relatively little to do with civil rights, they were the result of another crucial historical development, the urban evolution of the United States. On June 22, 1955, 178 drivers and mechanics of Division 704 of the Amalgamated Association of Street, Electric Railway, and Motor Coach Employees of America went on strike in Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Cammack Village.' The employer, Capitol Transit Company (CTC), and Division 704 had been unable to agree on an arbitrator to settle a wage dispute. While CTC president F. Norman Hill claimed the company could not afford to raise wages without going deeper into debt, the union insisted that the CTC was stuffing its pockets at the expense of drivers and mechanics.2 When the company decided to hire scabs to operate the buses, violence erupted. Although no one died as a result of the strike, it climaxed in the bombing of a bus that nearly killed two people. Yet the CTC strike has not been previously examined. Perhaps because the decline of urban transit systems in general does not attract a lot of study, even intense episodes in that history, such as the CTC strike, have been forgotten. But the strike merits examination for its inherent drama, the role it played in the history of Little Rock transit, and how it reflects the broader history of public transportation in the United States. In addition to representing a breakdown in labor relations, the strike exacerbated a strained relationship between the city governments of Little Rock and North Little Rock and CTC. The city of Little Rock had filed several civil suits against the company going back to June 1951. One of the cases was not resolved until 1958, two years after CTC had surrendered its franchise, ending the strike.3 The North Little Rock city council argued with the company in 1953 over franchise and service agreements.4 These conflicts between labor, the company, and officials of Little Rock and North Little Rock all had their roots in changes in the structure of the American city. How could an urban bus company expect to make enough money to substantially raise wages or pay higher franchise fees and assessments to cities when fewer people were riding buses every year? This was a question posed not only by CTC but by transit companies across the U.S. By the mid-195 Os, automobiles were stealing customers from bus companies, and television provided Americans entertainment without their having to leave the house at night.5 The abandonment of restrictions on rubber and gasoline after World War II had increased the production of automobiles, which had caused a drop in the price. Postwar prosperity enabled a wealthier middle class to purchase cars and suburban homes and move farther away from inner cities. Prosperity also meant transit companies spent more for labor while seeing smaller profits. The federal government began to improve urban highways, making car travel more convenient within cities.6 All of this added up to a death sentence for private urban transit systems across the country. Nearly 200 companies ceased operations between 1954 and 1963. Some communities the same size as the Greater Little Rock area (150,000 in 1960) saw their transit systems completely vanish.7 Although Greater Little Rock's transit system survived, it witnessed a sharp decline in ridership-and fare revenue-in the years following World War II. …