Boycott, Montgomery. "Montgomery Bus Boycott - Black History - HISTORY.Com." HISTORY.com. N. p., 2018. Web. 13 Feb. 2018.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement.

Oster, Grant. "History Leading Up To The Montgomery Bus Boycott." Hankering for History. N. p., 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2018.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was riding home on the bus and was seated in the middle section, the available section for whites and blacks. As whites were coming on the bus, the bus driver told Rosa Parks, along with three other passengers, to relinquish their seats and move to the back. When Rosa refused to move, the driver called for assistance from the police and Rosa was arrested for failing to obey the bus drivers assignment of seats. She was taken to the city hall and charged with violating segregation laws. (Even though she was sitting in a non-segregated part of the bus.) Once E.D. Nixon heard about Rosa Park’s arrest, he decided that she was the perfect person to serve as the poster child to the bus boycott. With her permission, E.D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson started the necessary steps to start the boycott. Jo Ann Robinson, with help from three other individuals, wrote and published a pamphlet calling for all black members of the community to boycott the buses on the following Monday. (While uncertain of the exact numbers, some estimate that 35,000 handouts were printed and distributed.) Throughout the community, Sunday church services also urged the community to boycott the buses on Monday; in fact, some started the boycott before Monday.

Boycott, Montgomery. "Montgomery Bus Boycott - Black History - HISTORY.Com." HISTORY.com. N. p., 2018. Web. 15 Feb. 2018.
As news of the boycott spread, African-American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama’s capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 African-American 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.

"Montgomery Bus Boycott." En.wikipedia.org. N. p., 2018. Web. 15 Feb. 2018.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.[1] Many important figures in the Civil Rights Movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.