Turbulent Times

         While the battle raged over the schools, an awakened civil rights movement among American blacks began to protest segregation in other areas of national life. Segregation of public transportation also came under attack because of one woman’s refusal to take a back seat. In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Rosa Parks was too tired after a long day at work to move to the back of the bus to the section reserved for African Americans.  Her arrest for violating the segregation law sparked a massive African American protest in Montgomery in the form of a boycott against riding the city buses. The Reverend Martin Luther King, jr., minister of the Baptist Church where the boycott started, soon emerged as the inspiring leader of a nonviolent movement to achieve integration. This gave room for King, the President of the MIA committee, and many other leaders a position of leadership within the national movement to show that the non-violent method of protest was effective.