On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a crowded bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to travel home after a hard day’s work. As always, she sat in the back, which was set aside for blacks.
After a few stops, all the seats were taken. Then a white passenger boarded, and the bus driver told Mrs. Parks and the others in her row to stand and let the white man sit. When Rosa Parks refused, she was taken to the police station and booked, then moved to the city jail. That evening, she was released on bond.
News of Rosa Parks’s arrest spread rapidly, and the city’s African-Americans decided to protest by staying off the buses. On the following Monday, almost all the city’s African-American bus riders had found another way to get to work. The boycotters had a very simple goal. They wanted to put a stop to the forced segregation on the city’s buses.
To keep the boycott going, Montgomery’s black leaders founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). They elected 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. president. The MIA started car pools to help people get to work, and they held meetings to encourage people to keep the boycott alive.

▲ After Rosa Parks’s arrest and the start of the bus boycott, many whites became enraged. People started calling King’s house with threats. Sometimes, he received 30 calls a night from people telling him to get out of town. However, King had more to think about than himself—namely, his new baby daughter, Yolanda.
During the bus boycott, police stopped African American drivers for made up or minor infractions. Today, that practice is known as “racial profiling”—stopping people because of their race. King himself was arrested for driving 30 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. About a hundred other people were arrested for breaking an old, forgotten antiboycott law. ▶


◀ Mrs. King and Yolanda were at home on the evening of January 30, 1956, when a bomb exploded on their front porch. Luckily, neither of them was injured. King rushed home from church and quieted the crowd that had gathered in front of his house, saying, “I want you to go home and put down your weapons. We must meet violence with nonviolence.... We must meet hate with love.”

▲ After the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregation on Alabama buses was unconstitutional, regular bus service started again in Montgomery on December 21, 1956. King proudly stepped onto the first bus that morning.
“We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than to ride in humiliation.”

HOW PEOPLE GOT AROUND

◀ People found many different ways to get around the city during the bus boycott. They walked, rode in taxis, or joined car pools organized by the MIA. Some of them rode mules or hitchhiked, and some white employers drove blacks to work.
MONEY COUNTS

▲ The boycott hurt the bus company financially. Three-fourths of all the people who rode the buses were African Americans. Without these passengers, many buses had to be taken out of service, some bus routes were discontinued, and the fare went from 10 to 15 cents. To stay in business, the bus company needed the black riders. The boycotters used the power of their dollars to force the company to meet their demands.
KING’S LIFELONG FRIEND

◀ Ralph Abernathy, minister of the First Baptist Church, was 29 years old when the bus boycott began. He became King’s right-hand man in the quest for civil rights. They spent a lot of time in jail together as a result of peacefully protesting unjust laws.