Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955-1956

On December 1st 1955 NAACP activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus for a white man. Parks was arrested and tried four days later. On the day of her trial black people in Montgomery, Alabama boycotted all buses and instead carpooled or walked. In Montgomery black people were the main source of income for bus companies, they hoped this would be incentive for bus companies to listen to their demands.Local Church ministers decided to call for a vote to prolong the boycott and at a meeting over 5000 attendants voted unanimously to continue the boycott and founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to organize it. The reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. Was made the leader. MIA's original demands did not demand desegregation, their demands were: The bus companies refused to agree to these terms and so the boycott continued. Originally white people did not think the boycott would be able to last, they believed that black people did not have the organization to keep it going and would start using the buses again when the weather got worse. However the boycott continued with black people organizing carpools, walking together, hitchhiking and bicycling. Despite intimidation and violence from white people the boycott continued until June 1956 when the NAACP took the case to a federal district court which ruled the segregated buses unconstitutional and ordering the desegregation of the buses in Montgomery thus ending the boycott.
 * more courteous treatment of black passengers
 * seating on a first-come, first-serve basis with whites filling the bus from the front backwards and blacks from the back forwards
 * employing black people as drivers

The Montgomery Bus Boycott gained national and international attention and made Martin Luther King a prominent leader for black civil rights.