a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear;

Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery’s black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year.

On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens stayed off the buses.

as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies’’ (Parks, 136).

‘‘I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong’’

After the city began to penalize black taxi drivers for aiding the boycotters,

no agreements were reached.

In early 1956, the homes of King and E. D. Nixon were bombed

‘‘Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place’’

King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case State of Alabama v. Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite this resistance, the boycott continued.

‘‘the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation’’

On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses.

King’s role in the bus boycott garnered international attention, and the MIA’s tactics of combining mass nonviolent protest with Christian ethics became the model for challenging segregation in the South.

20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott;

: ‘‘Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work’’