November 13, 1956

The handwriting was already on the wall, but on Nov. 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially put an end to segregated public transportation, declaring invalid an Alabama law and a Montgomery city ordinance requiring separation of the races on buses. In its ruling, the high court affirmed a 2-1 decision by a three-judge federal panel that had already declared the statutes a violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It was the climax for an extraordinary mass protest – the Montgomery Bus Boycott – led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that began almost a year earlier, in December 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus. Indeed, on the day of the Supreme Court decision, King was in court facing criminal charges for his role in coordinating the carpools used by blacks in Montgomery so they could avoid riding the segregated buses. The city and the state, however, weren’t ready to end the fight. They asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. The justices rejected that request on Dec. 17, 1956. Three days later, King and the Montgomery Improvement Association officially ended the boycott that had financially crippled the city’s bus system.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Rosa Parks is shown during a symbolic ride in the formerly whites-only section of a city bus in Montgomery on Dec. 21, 1956. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

A booking photograph of Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992) after her arrest during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Robinson was a civil rights activist and professor at Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) who became president of the Women’s Political Council in Montgomery and was a leading figure in organizing the boycott. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, Montgomery County Archives)

E.D. Nixon (1899-1987) was a civil rights leader in Montgomery during the 1960s who worked to get African-Americans registered to vote and was an organizer of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Nixon was one of more than 80 leaders of the boycott arrested by Montgomery police in February 1956. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Montgomery County)

A trolley passes the site where civil rights icon Rosa Parks was arrested Dec. 1, 1955, for not giving up her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest for this triggered a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Rosa Parks sitting at a table near a civil rights exhibition featuring photographs related to the Montgomery bus boycott. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

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