Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1955, an African American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. This inspired the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which put MLK on the national map after speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church.

“Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future somebody will have to say ‘There lived a race of people a black people, ‘fleecy locks and black complexion’, a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization.’ And we’re gonna do that.”

The Montgomery Bus Boycott at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955