With the arrest of seamstress Rosa Parks, the thirteen-month Montgomery Bus Boycott brought national awareness of racial segregation on southern city bus lines.

Mrs. Parks refused the bus driver's demands to move from her seat for a white passenger. Her incarceration ignited the interest of local church and community leaders. Her case provided the opportunity for integration advocates to fight segregation laws in the court system.

Individuals like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., utilized churches as a form of communication about the boycott. On December of 1955, community leaders held a meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and decided to boycott the city busses.

After securing Park's release, boycott leaders requested that three conditions be met or the boycott would continue. They wanted first-come-first serve seating, courtesy towards all passengers, and employment for black drivers. No immediate agreement between the city officials and boycotters occurred; therefore, the black population continued to refuse to ride the busses. As a direct result, bus routes bypassed black communities altogether.

The boycott finally ended in Montgomery on December 20, 1956, one month after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in Browder v. Goyle. To illustrate the transition from segregated to integrated buses, The New York Times reported few hostilities towards black bus riders on the first day.

Within a year, the bus boycott spread to at least thirteen different cities in the South. Numerous organized demonstrations represented the black communities' discontent over Jim Crow laws, which discriminated against African Americans in the public domain.

The influence of the boycotts led to great historical accomplishments during the Civil Rights Movement, such as the use of passive resistance, as advocated by MLK, to combat racial denigration.

Researched and written by University of West Florida Public History student, Chloe Diehl.