Supreme Court Ends Bus Segregation: Montgomery Boycott Wins
The Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling on November 13, 1956, declaring Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case, Browder v. Gayle, challenged Montgomery's segregated seating policy. Four Black women, Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, were the plaintiffs. Rosa Parks was not, though her arrest eleven months earlier had triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott that pressured the legal challenge. The boycott, led by the 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., lasted 381 days. Black residents organized carpools, walked miles to work, and faced bombings, arrests, and economic retaliation. The ruling vindicated nonviolent protest as a strategy and established King as a national leader. It also demonstrated that economic pressure and legal action could dismantle Jim Crow.
November 13, 1956
70 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Supreme Court of the United States
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Alabama
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
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Montgomery, Alabama
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United States Supreme Court
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Supreme Court of the United States
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Browder v. Gayle
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Alabama
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Montgomery bus boycott
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Vaccination policy
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Zucht v. King
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Apartheid
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segregation
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Civil rights movement
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Racial segregation
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Vaccination
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