Women's Political Council

The Women's Political Council, founded in Montgomery, Alabama, was an organization that was part of the Civil Rights Movement that was formed to address the racial issues in the city. Members included Mary Fair Burks, Jo Ann Robinson, Irene West, Thelma Glass, and Uretta Adair. The WPC was the first group to officially call for a boycott of the bus system during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, beginning in December 1955. The group led efforts in the early 1950s to secure better treatment for Black bus passengers, and in December 1955 it initiated the thirteen month bus boycott. They helped organize communications to get it started, as well as to support it, including giving people rides who were boycotting the buses. The African Americans of Montgomery upheld the boycott for more than a year.

It ended in late December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that the state and local laws for bus segregation were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to desegregate public transportation.

The WPC formed in 1946 as a civic organization for African-American professional women in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. It was inspired by the Atlanta Neighborhood Union. Many of its middle-class women were active in education; most of WPC's members were educators at Alabama State College or Montgomery's public schools. About forty women attended the first organizational meeting. Mary Fair Burks, who was head of Alabama State's English department, was the group's first president. Burks decided to form the organization after she was arrested after a traffic dispute with a white woman.

The group's initial purposes were to foster women's involvement in civic affairs, to promote voter registration through citizenship education, and to aid women who were victims of rape or assault. One of its most successful programs was an annual event called Youth City, which taught Black high school students about politics and government and "what democracy could and should mean". During election campaigns the WPC worked with the white-only League of Women Voters to inform Black citizens about political candidates.

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