On 20 December 1956, the Montgomery bus boycott ended after 13 months. The political and social mass action started on 5 December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. It was triggered by the arrest of a Black woman, Rosa Parks, four days earlier.
On 1 December, Parks refused to comply with an order to vacate a row of seats in the ‘Coloured’ section of a bus to make room for a White passenger. She was arrested and charged with violation of the Montgomery City code. Under the Jim Crow-era laws, the city’s buses were segregated on a racial basis.
Her arrest for civil disobedience motivated the African community to boycott Montgomery buses. Though the boycott was initially supposed to be a one-day event for the day Rosa appeared in court, its success prompted the organizers to continue it indefinitely. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to coordinate the boycott. Dr Martin Luther King Jr was chosen as its leader.
Under the MIA’s guidance, Black people devised various means to avoid using buses. These included walking, cycling, and carpooling.
The boycott greatly impacted the income of the bus company that operated the buses, as Black people accounted for more than 60% of its customers. Despite the hardball tactics of the city authorities to end the boycott, the Black community refused to yield.
On 1 February 1956, the MIA took their fight to the courtroom when they filed a lawsuit in the US District Court challenging the legality of the city’s bus segregation system. In a June judgment, the court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. Unsatisfied with the judgment, the city appealed to the US Supreme Court.
On 13 November, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling and ordered the desegregation of buses in Montgomery and all parts of the country where such laws were present. The order went into effect on 20 December 1956, 381 days after the boycott had started.
The boycott’s success proved that nothing is out of reach once Black people unite.
Sources:
https://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/rosaparks.html
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/montgomery-bus-boycott