Martin Luther King Jr. and Montgomery Bus Boycott

Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1955, the modern civil rights movement was effectively launched with the arrest of young seamstress Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. Police arrested Parks because she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus. After the arrest, blacks throughout the city joined together in a massive rally outside one of the city’s Baptist churches to hear the young preacher Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against segregation, Parks’s arrest, and the Jim Crow law she had violated. Blacks also organized the Montgomery bus boycott, boycotting city transportation for nearly a year before the Supreme Court finally struck down the city’s segregated bus seating as unconstitutional.

In 1957, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to rally support from southern churches for the civil rights movement. Inspired by Indian political activist Mohandas Gandhi, King hoped the SCLC would lead a large-scale protest movement based on “love and nonviolence.”

Summary of Montgomery Bus Boycott