THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

Montgomery's black community had long-standing grievances about the mistreatment of blacks on city buses.

Many white bus drivers treated blacks rudely, often cursing them and humiliating them by enforcing the city's segregation laws, which forced black riders to sit in the back of buses and give up their seats to white passengers on crowded buses. By the early 1950s Montgomery's blacks had discussed boycotting the buses in an effort to gain better treatment—but not necessarily to end segregation.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a leading member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was ordered by a bus driver to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she refused, she was arrested and taken to jail. Local leaders of the NAACP, especially Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of popular and highly respected Parks was the event that could rally local blacks to a bus protest.

Nixon also believed that a citywide protest should be led by someone who could unify the community. Unlike Nixon and other leaders in Montgomery's black community, the recently arrived Martin Luther King had no enemies. Furthermore, Nixon saw Martin Luther King's public-speaMartin Luther King gifts as great assets in the battle for black civil rights in Montgomery. Martin Luther King was soon chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the organization that directed the bus boycott.

The Montgomery bus boycott lasted for more than a year, demonstrating a new spirit of protest among Southern blacks. Martin Luther King's serious demeanor and consistent appeal to Christian brotherhood and American idealism made a positive impression on whites outside the South. Incidents of violence against black protesters, including the bombing of Martin Luther King's home, focused media attention on Montgomery. In February 1956 an attorney for the MIA filed a lawsuit in federal court seeMartin Luther King an injunction against Montgomery's segregated seating practices.

The federal court ruled in favor of the MIA, ordering the city's buses to be desegregated, but the city government appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme Court. By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in November 1956, Martin Luther King was a national figure. His memoir of the bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended Martin Luther King's national influence.