At that time, a little-known minister named Martin Luther King Jr. had recently become a leader within the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.
Born and educated in Atlanta, King studied the writings and practices of Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi. Their teaching advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to social injustice.
A staunch devotee of nonviolence, King and his colleague Ralph Abernathy organized a boycott of Montgomery's buses.
The demands they made were simple: Black passengers should be treated with courtesy. Seating should be allotted on a first-come-first-serve basis, with white passengers sitting from front to back and black passengers sitting from back to front. And African American drivers should drive routes that primarily serviced African Americans. On Monday, December 5, 1955 the boycott went into effect.
Montgomery officials stopped at nothing in attempting to sabotage the boycott. King and Abernathy were arrested. Violence began during the action and continued after its conclusion. Four churches — as well as the homes of King and Abernathy — were bombed. But the boycott continued.
King and Abernathy's organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), had hoped for a 50 percent support rate among African Americans.

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