Montgomery bus boycott

Montgomery bus boycott
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery's public transportation system was legally integrated. Behind Parks is Nicholas C. Chriss, a UPI reporter covering the event.
DateDecember 5, 1955 – December 20, 1956 (1955-12-05 – 1956-12-20)
Location
Caused by
Resulted in
Parties
Lead figures

City Commission

  • W. A. Gayle, President of the Commission (mayor)
  • Frank Parks, Commissioner
  • Clyde Sellers, Police Commissioner

National City Lines

  • Kenneth E. Totten, vice president

Montgomery City Lines

  • J.H. Bagley, manager
  • Jack Crenshaw, attorney
  • James F. Blake, bus driver

The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.[1]

  1. ^ "Montgomery Bus Boycott". Civil Rights Movement Archive.