s. history us history us history - Embassy of the United States

Above, Rosa Parks sits in one of the front seats of a city bus followingthe successful boycott of the bus system in 1955-56 by African-American citizens of Montgomery, Alabama. The boycott wasorganized to protest the practice of segregation in which AfricanAmericans were forced to sit in the back of the bus. The SupremeCourt agreed that this practice was a constitutional violation ayear after the boycott began. The great leader of the civil rightsmovement in America, Martin Luther King Jr., gained nationalprominence through the Montgomery bus boycott.Opposite page, right, Martin Luther King Jr. escorts children to apreviously all-white public school in Grenada, Mississippi, in 1966.Although school segregation was outlawed in the landmark Brownv. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court in 1954, it tookdecades of protest, political pressure, and additional court decisionsto enforce school desegregation across the country.240 241