Martin Luther King, 15th January 1929 - 4th April 1968 |
| In Montgomery, black people were made to sit on the back of buses and always had to give up their seat should a white person want it. When Rosa Parks, an elderly black woman, refused to vacate her seat, she was arrested. Martin Luther King and other community leaders decided it was time to act. They had had enough of being treated unfairly. |
| A meeting was called (later to be known as the Montgomery Improvement Association) which decided to call on all black people to stop using the buses. This was called a 'bus boycott'. After 381 days with buses being virtually empty (costing the company lots of money), the government passed a law to state that it was illegal to segregate black people from white people on the buses. This was a victory for Martin Luther King and his beliefs in non-violent direct action. |
