Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery’s segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The boycott was led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery bus boycott when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. The boycott proved to be one of the pivotal moments of the emerging civil rights movement. For 13 months, starting in December 1955, the black citizens of Montgomery protested nonviolently with the goal of desegregating the city’s public buses. December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. Learning From Rosa Parks, The Indypendent; Montgomery Bus Boycott – Presented by the Montgomery Advertiser Archived December 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Civil Rights Era Mug Shots, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Alabama Department of Archives & History; Martin Luther King and the "Montgomery Story" Comic Book – 1956; Montgomery The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands. On 1 December 1955 local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This single act of nonviolent resistance helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott, a 13-month struggle to desegregate the city’s Montgomery Bus Boycott. 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 On March 2, 1955, a black teenager named Claudette Colvin dared to defy bus segregation laws and was forcibly removed from another Montgomery bus. Nine months later, Rosa Parks - a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP member- wanted a guaranteed seat on the bus for her ride home after working as a seamstress in a Montgomery department store. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 was a defining moment in the American Civil Rights Movement. Triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, the 13-month protest campaign reshaped the struggle for racial equality and introduced the world to a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the first president of the Mongomery Improvement Association, which organized the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. This began a chain reaction of similar boycotts throughout the South. In 1956, the Supreme Court voted to end segregated busing. 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 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. "Lawyer for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Montgomery bus boycott, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the desegregation of Alabama schools, and the Selma march." The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson Martin Luther King, Jr. - Civil Rights, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Nonviolence: While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a native Alabamian who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were married in 1953 and had four children. King had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, slightly more than a year when the city’s small group of civil Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the MIA was instrumental in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott, a successful campaign that focused national attention on racial segregation in the South and catapulted King into the national spotlight. In his memoir, King concluded that as a result of the protest “the Negro citizen in Browse 255 authentic montgomery bus boycott stock photos, high-res images, and pictures, or explore additional martin luther king jr or rosa parks stock images to find the right photo at the right size and resolution for your project. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary of the local NAACP, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. As a result, Parks was arrested for violating a city law. Parks’ actions and subsequent arrest launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott, pushing Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight. It is particularly relevant on this Martin Luther King holiday. Her name was Rosa Parks, she was forty-two years old, and on Thursday, December 1, 1955, she was very tired. She found a seat on a Montgomery bus, but when the bus filled up the driver told her to stand so a white man could sit there. The black community of Montgomery had held firm in their resolve. The Montgomery bus boycott triggered a firestorm in the South. Across the region, blacks resisted "moving to the back of the bus." Similar actions flared up in other cities. The boycott put Martin Luther King Jr. in the national spotlight. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama during the 1955 bus boycott. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement and was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. (National Archives)
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