Supreme Court Affirms Montgomery Bus Segregation Unconstitutional, Boycott Ends in Victory

On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the district court ruling in Browder v. Gayle, declaring Montgomery, Alabama’s bus segregation laws unconstitutional. The decision marked the triumphant conclusion of the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott and established Martin Luther King Jr. as a national civil rights leader while demonstrating the power of organized nonviolent economic resistance.

The boycott had begun on December 5, 1955, four days after Rosa Parks’s arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. The action built on years of organizing by local activists, including E.D. Nixon of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Jo Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council, who had prepared for such a protest before Parks’s arrest. The newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the 26-year-old Reverend King, coordinated alternative transportation through carpools, black-owned taxis, and walking.

The boycott inflicted severe economic damage on the bus company and downtown merchants. Montgomery City Lines lost 65% of its revenue as African Americans, who comprised 75% of bus riders, found other means of transportation. White authorities responded with harassment, mass arrests, and violence—King’s home was bombed in January 1956. Eighty-nine leaders were indicted under an anti-boycott law, and King was convicted and fined.

The legal victory came through Browder v. Gayle, a federal lawsuit filed by four African American women represented by NAACP attorneys. On June 5, 1956, a three-judge panel ruled Montgomery’s bus segregation unconstitutional, citing Brown v. Board of Education. The city appealed, but the Supreme Court affirmed the ruling on November 13. After the court order arrived on December 20, King and other leaders boarded an integrated bus the following day.

The Montgomery victory electrified the civil rights movement, proving that sustained nonviolent protest could defeat Jim Crow. It launched King’s leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and provided a model for subsequent campaigns in Birmingham, Selma, and across the South.