Montgomery Bus Boycott

One of the most effective tools of nonviolent resistance, the economic boycott, was demonstrated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in December 1955. Triggered by the refusal of seamstress Rosa Parks to give up her segregated seating to a white person, the boycott lasted more than a year and evoked nearly 100% participation from the African American community of Montgomery, Alabama. With Martin Luther King, Jr., as leader, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to devise a plan of action, respond to white opposition tactics, and organize an alternative system of transportation so that blacks could get to their jobs. Through a system of private taxis, as people with cars picked up boycotters and took them to work, the boycott was sustained for 381 days. Throughout the ordeal, love, justice, and nonviolence prevailed.

According to Montgomery city law, it was illegal for a passenger to refuse or fail to take a seat among those assigned to the race to which he belongs at the request of the driver. Drivers were expected to assign passengers seats in such a way as to separate white people from Negroes. Rosa Parks was not the first to resist that law. Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith had been tried and fined for refusing to give up their seats on the bus. The Women's Political Council, led by Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson, had plans for a boycott in response to one of these incidents and were waiting for the right person to be arrested. Rosa Parks, an NAACP member who had recently completed training at the Highlander Center, was willing to test segregation laws in court.

The plan of action devised by the Montgomery Improvement Association put forward three resolutions: that blacks would not ride buses until polite treatment by bus drivers was guaranteed them; segregation should be abolished on buses, to be replaced by a first-come, first-served policy; and black bus drivers should be hired. The city responded with higher cab rates, violence, false reports that the boycott had ended, arrests of leaders, harassment by police, and cancellation of car insurance policies. Nevertheless, individuals—white and black, ministers, educators, laborers, businessmen, white housewives who needed their servants, and members of the armed services—substituted their vehicles for buses and for taxicabs that had become too expensive.

Eventually, boycott leaders filed a federal lawsuit against Montgomery's segregation laws, claiming that they were not in accord with the Fourteenth Amendment. After a federal court decision supporting the boycotters' position, Montgomery County lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a judge ruled that carpooling was a public nuisance. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, later affirmed the decision that segregation on buses was illegal; thus carpooling was no longer needed. On December 20, 1956, the official mandate reached Montgomery. Leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and E. D. Nixon were the first to ride the buses once again.