The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed.
On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling that bus segregation violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, which led to the successful end of the bus boycott on December 20, 1956.
When the Montgomery Bus Boycott launched, Dr. Martin Luther King was only 26 years old and new to the city. He was selected to lead the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association, which guided the boycott and mounted the legal challenge to segregated buses.
Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional.
Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional.
Supp. 707 (1956), was a landmark federal court case that ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional. The case was heard before a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on the segregation of Montgomery and Alabama state buses.
Board of Education for Montgomery African Americans helped motivate them to continue the boycott. The company reluctantly desegregated its buses only after November 13, 1956, when the Supreme Court ruled Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause provides that no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.