When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested in December 1955, she set off a train of events that generated a momentum the civil rights movement had never before experienced. Local civil rights leaders were hoping for such an opportunity to test the city's segregation laws. Deciding to boycott the buses, the African American community soon formed a new organization to supervise the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen as the first MIA leader. The boycott, more successful than anyone hoped, led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregated buses. This image shows the front page of the Montgomery Advertiser reporting on the meeting.
"5,000 at Meeting Outline Boycott; Bullet Clips Bus." Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott.
Montgomery Advertiser, December 6, 1955.
Copyprint from microfilm.
Serial and Government Publications Division. (9-3)
Courtesy of the Montgomery Advertiser.