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Like the authorities in Little Rock, Arkansas, the authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, were very slow to implement desegregation. Two important groups that campaigned to speed up change were:

• the state’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch, which helped black people to register to vote and encouraged black people to ignore bus segregation rules
• the Women’s Political Council (WPC), which campaigned for the desegregation of drinking fountains and the employment of black police officers

One black activist who worked for the NAACP was Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks

• Paid job: Worked in a department store as a seamstress.
• Voluntary job: State National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) secretary.
• She worked to promote civil rights before the Montgomery bus boycott. She did this by:
  • helping black people to register to vote in elections, which was very difficult under the Jim Crow laws
  • campaigning to desegregate libraries, which would give black people access to better facilities

• Her actions led onto the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

In December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. This was not the first time she had refused to give up her seat, but on this occasion her civil disobedience triggered a city-wide response. The NAACP and WPC decided to organise a city-wide bus boycott on the day of Parks’ trial. Most black people observed the boycott. Around 70 per cent of the bus users in Montgomery were black, this meant the bus company's profits were greatly reduced.

After Parks was found guilty and fined $10, a longer bus boycott was planned. It was to be organised by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which included a mixture of community and church leaders and was led by Dr Martin Luther King Jnr. As well as organising the boycott, the MIA initially demanded that:

• both white and black passengers should be permitted to sit anywhere on a bus, on a ‘first come, first served’ basis
• white bus drivers should be polite to black passengers
• the bus company should employ black drivers on routes mostly used by black passengers

Effects of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Black people, who were most often on low incomes, commonly depended on buses to get to work. Therefore, the year-long boycott was a huge sacrifice for them. The MIA was determined that black people should stick with the boycott, as they believed it would only be effective if all black people were shown to be determined to fight segregation. To make things easier, the MIA also set up car pools and encouraged black taxi drivers to charge the same rate as the bus.

Despite these measures, the boycott was tough for black Americans, for several reasons:

• Some people, such as Rosa Parks, lost their job for supporting the boycott.
• Some leaders, such as Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, were violently attacked by white supremacists and mistreated by the police. King and other church leaders had their homes bombed.
• Many of the people involved in the car pools were stopped by the police and charged with minor or made-up offences, such as driving too slowly.
• Laws that prevented people from gathering in large numbers were used to arrest black people as they waited to be picked up by pool cars.

Results of the boycott

In February 1956, 90 members of MIA were arrested for ‘disrupting lawful business’. All were found guilty, and some were fined while others were imprisoned. However, the trial gave the MIA the chance to publicise their grievances nationally. Funds poured into the MIA as black and white people from all over the USA supported their cause.

When it became clear that negotiations with the city authorities were not working, the NAACP took the matter to the Supreme Court. This court case became known as Browder v Gayle.

In Browder v Gayle, the Supreme Court made reference to the Brown v Topeka decision. It ruled that because Brown v Topeka had shown that segregation in education was unconstitutional, it was unconstitutional in transport as well. The MIA had achieved the significant victory of desegregating Montgomery’s buses.

Other effects of the ruling were: