On this day in Alabama history: Montgomery bus laws challenged

January 30, 1956

Attorney Fred Gray filed a federal lawsuit in Montgomery challenging local and state bus segregation laws. The lawsuit came nearly two months after the arrest of Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott but did not include Parks as a plaintiff due to technical reasons. Instead, Gray filed the lawsuit on behalf of five other African-American women – Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder, Susan McDonald and Jeanetta Reese – who had previously been arrested for refusing to give up their seats on city buses to white passengers. Known as Browder v. Gayle, the lawsuit made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the District Court ruling that bus segregation laws are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Renowned civil rights attorney and Montgomery native Fred Gray (1930- ), shown here as a young man, represented Rosa Parks after she violated segregation laws on a Montgomery city bus. Gray worked with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., E. D. Nixon, and others to end segregation. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Fred Gray)

Attorney Fred Gray (Mrs. Parks’ lawyer in 1955), Rosa Parks, and Martin King III, Dr. King’s oldest son, c. 1980-1989. (Rosa Parks Paper, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Fred Gray, Sr., civil rights attorney. (Corkythehornetfan, Wikipedia)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.