How was resistance to desegregation overcome in the Montgomery Alabama public bus system?

Answer 1

The African-American community, lead by local church pastors like Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama city bus system to protest its segregation policies after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. The boycott, which began on December 5, 1955, created economic hardship for the bus line because 90% of its income came from African-American passengers.

Rosa Parks and four other women, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith filed two lawsuits stating the discrimination was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. Rosa Parks' case got stuck in the Alabama State court system, but the other case, Browder v. Gayle(Gayle was the mayor of Montgomery at that time), worked its way through the federal system all the way to the Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court held segregation in public transportation is unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle, (1956), and ordered the bus company to integrate immediately (which they did).

The protest ended on December 21, 1956, 381 days after it started and one day after the Supreme Court released its decision.