The Supreme Court Affirms the Ruling Against Bus Segregation in Montgomery

The Boycott

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. Four days later, on December 5, Black residents of the city began a boycott of the buses. The boycott was organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association, whose president was Martin Luther King Jr., a young Baptist minister. Thousands of people walked or took part in car pools for the next year.

The Lawsuit

On February 1, 1956, the lawyer Fred Gray filed a federal lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, on behalf of four Black women who had been mistreated on Montgomery buses: Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith. The defendants included Montgomery's mayor, William A. Gayle. A panel of three federal judges ruled 2 to 1 on June 5, 1956, that Alabama's state and local laws requiring segregated buses violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The city and state appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's Order

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court issued a short order affirming the decision of the lower court. The Court did not issue a long opinion of its own. The same day, a state judge in Montgomery granted the city an injunction against the car pools run by the Montgomery Improvement Association. The city asked the Supreme Court to reconsider, and the Court rejected the request in December.

The End of the Boycott

The Supreme Court's order reached Montgomery on December 20, 1956. The Montgomery Improvement Association voted to end the boycott, which had lasted 381 days, and Black and white passengers began to ride the buses together on December 21. The case was one of several in the 1950s that dealt with segregation in public facilities after the Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which concerned public schools.

Earlier Events in Montgomery

Claudette Colvin, one of the plaintiffs, had been arrested on a Montgomery bus on March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks, for refusing to give up her seat. Parks was a secretary of the local branch of the NAACP. Under the city's rules bus drivers could order Black passengers to give up seats for white passengers. King's home in Montgomery was bombed on January 30, 1956, and he was arrested on charges related to the boycott in February 1956. After the buses were integrated, some buses were shot at, and in January 1957 several Black churches and homes in the city were bombed.