In the midst of all the injustice of having to stand because a white person needed a seat came a woman who refused to give in to the rules. Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 refused to give her seat up for a white man, which in turn led to her arrest. A man by the name of E.D. Nixon, president of the NAACP at the time, helped get Mrs. Parks out of jail and saw this as an opportunity to end the segregation of buses in Montgomery. This began a small, but effective chain reaction to begin the bus boycott. Phone calls were made, supporters were recruited, and a new direct way to turn the tide of bus segregation had begun. Mrs. Parks was noted as the "perfect symbol" (Sitkoff 39) because of her appearance. She was dignified, intelligent, respectable, and married (

The boycott certainly had its pessimists who just didn't believe in what they were standing for. Nonetheless the boycott went on and it took its toll. Blacks hopped on carpools, black taxis, or walked. All ages from the teen to the elderly walked to support the cause. King optimistically met with the Mayor of Montgomery, W. A. Gayle, to try to set a compromise. To his dismay he was immediately rejected and realized after that this was not a war of trying to work things out. This was a struggle to maintain the white power over the blacks. The impact on the white society was felt. Because of the limited area blacks could get to without the bus, many stores lost the business of the blacks. The bus lines had lost its main base of customers and had to find a way to get them back on. Threats began to hit black boycott leaders and carpool drivers. Threats of being fired from their jobs, licenses being revoked, and increased amount of speeding tickets began to break up the boycott. King himself was arrested for speeding 4 days after the boycott began. An arrest that would bring together hundreds of protesters to the police station in support of King. A great sign that the blacks will not give up on what they started to strive for. This would bring the blacks to the next critical part of the Boycott. As King was giving his Montgomery Improvement Association speech, a bomb was set off in front of his house. Angry protesters came to Kings aid carrying weapons of all sorts, but King staying with his beliefs of nonviolence told the crowd to remember what they started and the purpose of it. It was to be a war fought by love not fighting and that they must stay with what is said. A task not very easy to follow along with because of tempers that flare when things go wrong. On June 4th 1956 a federal district court rejected an appeal made by 3 black women to desegregate buses pending the decision of the Supreme Court. At the same time Montgomery attempted to shut down the MIA carpools by getting an injunction against them, saying that they operated a business without a license (Sitkoff 51). This would cause King even more worry because if it passed then the black community would certainly get on the buses again. Finally the news hit King. The Supreme Court had decided against the segregation of buses, the blacks had won after 381 days of boycotting.

This victory created a new South, a South that had the courage to stand up to authority. The confidence that they indeed had the power to make a change. Martin Luther King Jr. would come out of this as the great hero. The one who stood for what was right and what would ultimately come out as victorious. This was a struggle that brought the black community together. They lear

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Approximate Word count = 1857
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)