Black Protest Movements

The Montgomery bus boycott began in December
1955 when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was
arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city
bus to a white passenger. For a full year after her
arrest blacks in Montgomery defied custom, law,
and violent intimidation, and refused to ride in the
segregated city buses. In the end they were victori-
ous: Montgomery’s bus system was desegregated
and civil rights was on its way to the center of...