The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal episode in the U.S. civil rights movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Many important figures in the civil rights movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.
Read more about Montgomery Bus Boycott: Events Leading Up To The Bus Boycott, Method of Segregation On Montgomery Buses, Rosa Parks, E. D. Nixon, Boycott, Victory
Famous quotes containing the words montgomery, bus and/or boycott:
“Stand up and bless the Lord,
Ye children of His choice;
Stand up, and bless the Lord your God
With heart, and soul, and voice.”
—James Montgomery (1771–1854)
“Nora was always free with it and threw her heart away as if it was a used bus ticket.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Women are the people who are going to relieve us from all this oppression and depression. The rent boycott that is happening in Soweto now is alive because of the women. It is the women who are on the street committees educating the people to stand up and protect each other.”
—Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu (b. 1919)