On 1 December 1955, Virginia Durr and her husband Clifford went with E. D. Nixon to bail Rosa Parks out of jail for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Durr later wrote, “That was a terrible sight to me to see this gentle, lovely, sweet woman, whom I knew and was so fond of, being brought down by a matron” (Durr, 280). March 22, 1956-- King, Rosa Parks and more than 100 others were arrested on charges of organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott in protest of Parks' treatment. September 3, 1958-- While attempting to attend the arraignment of a man accused of assaulting Abernathy, King is arrested outside Montgomery’s Recorder’s Court and charged with In 1943 Rosa Parks joined the local chapter of the NAACP and was elected secretary. Two years later, she registered to vote, after twice being denied. By 1949 Parks was advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council. Under her guidance, youth members challenged the Jim Crow system by checking books out of whites-only libraries. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at licensing@i-p-m.com or 404 526-8968. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a The Montgomery Bus Boycott speech reprinted below is one of the first major addresses of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King spoke to nearly 5,000 people at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955, just four days after Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus. The records being preserved include a bail document signed in black ink by King, who was arrested in March 1956 with Parks and more than 100 others on charges of boycotting the city bus system in The university is preserving court documents linked to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and others that were found in a box at the county courthouse. (Credit: Jay Reeves/AP Photo) For 382 days, almost the entire African American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses. The protests Local activists—among them, a young Martin Luther King, Jr.—organized a single-day boycott to coincide with her trial. Parks was convicted and fined $14 at her trial. While her attorneys If Mrs. Parks had merely had a headache that day, and if the community had had no grievances, there would have been no bus boycott and we would never have heard of Martin Luther King. Although the three riders next to her did give up their seats to white passengers, Rosa Parks refused. She chose to be arrested: A simple act of defiance by Rosa Parks in 1955 triggered one of the most celebrated civil rights campaigns in history. John Kirk examines how the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 launched the career of Martin Luther King Jr and changed the face of modern America Together with Clifford Durr, a white attorney, Nixon bailed Parks out of jail and quickly began to mobilize Montgomery’s black community. Impressed by King’s address to the local NAACP chapter several months earlier, Nixon asked him to host a bus-boycott planning meeting at his church on 2 December. Rosa Parks, with Martin Luther King Jr. in the background, is pictured here soon after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After earning his PhD at Boston University’s School of Theology, King had returned to the Deep South with his new bride, Coretta Scott, a college-educated, rural Alabama native. Martin Luther king wanted to get Rosa parks out of jail because he taught Rosa parks was innocent and that she was fighting for her rights when a bus driver yelled at her to get up and give her The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at licensing@i-p-m.com or 404 526-8968. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a Rosa Parks refuses to vacate her seat and move to the rear of a Montgomery city bus to make way for a white passenger. The driver notifies the police, who arrest Parks for violating city and state ordinances. Parks is released on $100 bond. He was key in bailing Rosa Parks out of jail and positioning her case to spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, recruiting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well. Background was a white Christian preacher and outspoken opponent of segregation once paid to bail out Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail. Montgomery Bus Boycott led to the federal court ruling that segregation on city buses violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment The 381-day bus boycott also brought the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., into the spotlight as one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement. The event that triggered the boycott took place in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give In these passages from an oral history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks describes the circumstances of her arrest and E. D. Nixon, a Montgomery NAACP official, describes the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and the selection of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as the organization’s president.
Articles and news, personal stories, interviews with experts.
Photos from events, contest for the best costume, videos from master classes.