The Cambridge Guide to African American History

Rosa Parks's arrest, 1 December 1955, for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger inspired a 381-day protest in Montgomery, Alabama. It not only involved nonviolence and a US Supreme Court decision against bus segregation; it also meant international press coverage for civil rights and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership.

The black community sustained the boycott, set by the Women's Political Council for December 5, when Parks, local NAACP secretary, went on trial. After her conviction, civic groups and churches formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), elected King of Dexter Avenue Baptist president, and called a mass meeting to continue the effort. MIA sued in Federal Court and negotiated with city authorities, as blacks walked, used taxicabs, and car pooled. Facing police harassment, legal injunctions, arbitrary arrests, and racist violence, which brought them publicity as well as allies, they used, in King's words, “a new and powerful weapon–nonviolent resistance.”