In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, the municipal buses were segregated. The first four rows were reserved for whites only. If all the front seats were taken and more whites entered the bus, Negroes in the unreserved section had to turn their seats over to them. If a Negro found the unreserved section full and the white section empty, he had to stand in the aisle, gazing at the empty seats in front. A Montgomery city ordinance enforced the seating policy, and Negro violators could be fined and jailed.

Mrs. Rosa Parks was a 42 year old black lady who was a tailor's assistant or seamstress in a downtown department store. On December 1, 1955, she got on the bus at Court Square and sat in the first row behind the reserved white section. The white section filled up and a white man boarded the bus and had no place to sit. According to the law, all four Negroes in the row immediately behind the white section were to stand so the white man could sit, thereby extending the white section an additional row. The other three stood up but Rosa Parks refused to stand. The driver ordered her to stand and threatened to call the police. When she still refused to stand, she was arrested and booked for violating the city bus ordinance. She was immediately bailed out by E. D. Nixon, a regional official of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leader of the Montgomery and Alabama chapters of the NAACP.

Nixon called a 27 year old local minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On the night of December 2, they and about 50 other black leaders had a meeting at which it was decided that Negroes would boycott the Montgomery bus system beginning December 5. When the meeting ended, King said, "the clock on the wall read almost midnight, but the clock in our souls revealed that it was daybreak." On Monday, December 5 the boycott began and that night King was elected to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, a group organized to run the boycott and handle future racial difficulties as well.

The 50,000 Negroes in Montgomery constituted about 75% of the bus company's riders and the boycott was 98% effective. Many buses on lines in black areas ran totally empty.

The MIA negotiated with the city and the bus company with no results. Blacks stayed off the buses. To help them, Black taxi drivers carried Blacks to and from work charging only bus fare. On December 13, taxis were ordered to charge the regular rate so the MIA set up a network of volunteer Negro drivers to carry people for nothing. The boycott continued and whites tried all sorts of things to end it including threats of violence. On January 30, 1956, King's house was bombed. King was arrested and tried for violating a law prohibiting boycotts. On March 22 he was fined $500 and sentenced to 386 days at hard labor. He was freed on appeal. This brought national attention to King and to the boycott.

Meanwhile, Rosa Parks had been found guilty and fined $14. Her case was appealed by the NAACP and, on November 13, 1956, the local laws requiring segregation on buses were declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court. On December 20, 1956, the Supreme Court mandate finally reached Montgomery and early the next day, Martin Luther King and other black leaders boarded the first integrated bus in the history of Montgomery, Alabama and sat in the formerly all-white section. The 381 day boycott had ended and the Civil Rights Movement had been launched.

Reference: Oates, Stephen B., "Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.", New York, 1982, Harper & Row.