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In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

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The Women's Political Council (WPC) meets with Montgomery mayor W. A. Gayle to outline their recommended changes for the Montgomery bus system.

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Claudette Colvin arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman.

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Black leaders in Montgomery, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, meet with city officials to discuss bus seating requirements.

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Rosa Parks was an African American seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama. She was a role model of courage in the face of racial injustice. Through her commitment to her race and to the cause of civil rights and racial injustice, was prepared to give up everything to fight for what was right, and that was justice for the African American community.

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Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

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Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery’s Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the “coloured section.” When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other black riders complied, but Parks refused. She was arrested for not complying to segregation laws on buses and fined $10 plus a $4 court fees. Her defiance sparked a reaction from the African American community of Montgomery.

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The Women's Political Council calls for a one-day boycott of all buses.

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On this day, black ministers announce the boycott in church and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

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Rosa Parks is set to appear in court for the arrest. She is found guilty and gets a prison sentence for which E.D. Nixon, a prominent black leader in the Civil Rights Movement, helps bail her out.

This Day also marks the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Instead of the expected 60% turnout, an estimated 90%-100% of the black community in Montgomery choose to participate in the boycott. Approximately 40,000 black bus riders—the majority of the city’s bus riders—boycotted the system the next day, December 5.

That afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr, the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 and helped organize the first major protest of the African American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

King appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the event’s grand finale was King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech.

In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, King became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In the late 1960s, King openly criticised U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic rights for poor Americans. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

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The MIA implements a carpool system to support citizens taking part in the boycott.

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Dr. King's home is bombed. In response, Dr. King calls for peaceful protest rather than violent action.

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Dr. King is indicted as a leader of the boycott and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail.

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The Supreme Court's orders of injunction against segregation on city buses are delivered to the Montgomery City Hall.
King leads black people on the buses where they could sit wherever they wanted. This landmark constitutional victory gave reason, purpose and confidence to the desegregation movement.

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Montgomery's buses are officially desegregated. The MIA ends the boycott.