The first major civil rights action that Martin Luther King Jr. led was the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956, launched after Rosa Parks’ arrest in Montgomery, Alabama.

Quick Scoop

  • In December 1955, local Black leaders in Montgomery organized a boycott of the city’s segregated buses after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and was arrested.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., then a young pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was chosen to lead the new Montgomery Improvement Association, making him the primary spokesperson and strategist of the boycott.
  • The boycott lasted for over a year, using nonviolent protest—carpools, walking, and community organizing—and it ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses in Montgomery was unconstitutional.

This Montgomery bus boycott became King’s breakthrough as a national civil rights leader and is widely recognized as the first major civil rights action he led.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.