When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the African American community organized a bus boycott to protest racial segregation laws. The year-long boycott of the bus system financially hurt the city and ultimately led the Supreme Court to rule that Alabama's segregation laws were unconstitutional. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader of the boycott movement, which helped spur the civil rights movement.

1. Montgomery
bus
Boycott

2. Struggle continues
• Just because the Brown v.
Board of Education case
had been won did not
mean that African-
Americans got equality
immediately.

3. Struggle continues
• In August, 1955, an
African-American boy
was killed for talking to a
white woman.

4. Struggle continues
• When the jury found his
killer innocent, a number
of protests broke out in
many southern cities.

5. Bus Ride
• In December, 1955, a
seamstress named Rosa
Parks was heading home
from a day of work to her
home in Montgomery,
Alabama.
Alabama

6. Bus Ride
• Because the buses of
Montgomery were
segregated she took a seat in
the rear of the bus in the
section that was supposed to
be for African-Americans.

7. Bus Ride
• When a white man got on
the bus, the driver, who had
police power to do so,
ordered Parks to get up
from her seat so the white
man could sit there.

8. Bus Ride
• She refused and was
arrested for not giving
up her seat.

9. Bus Ride
• Almost immediately,
throughout Montgomery,
African-Americans began
to talk to one another
about what their response
to this should be.

10. Bus Ride
• They decided that the best
way to handle it was to
boycott, or refuse, to ride
the public bus lines,
choosing instead to walk
to work or take taxis.

11. Bus Ride
• This decision meant a heavy
financial loss for the city’s
bus system and, a year later,
led to the Supreme Court of
the United States stating that
Alabama’s segregation laws
were unconstitutional.

12. Bus Ride
• One of the leaders of this
movement was the Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr., who
quickly now became a leader
for change in the African-
American community.