During the Fifties, Montgomery's bus system was a miniature model of segregated society - as was the norm in the South. The regulation ordering blacks to give up seats to whites came under repeated attack from black organizations, culminating in the call by the Women's Political Council for a mass boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat. Black workers were asked to walk to work, while black-owned taxis carried those who lived further away for the same 10ยข fare as buses. The protest attracted over ninety percent support, and the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), set up to coordinate activities, elected the 26-year-old Dr Martin Luther King Jr as its chief spokesperson. Meanwhile, the laid-off white bus drivers were employed as temporary police officials. Despite personal hardships, bombings and jailings, the boycott continued for eleven months, until in November 1956, the US Supreme Court declared segregation on public transportation to be illegal.

King remained pastor at the small brick Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church , surprisingly central at 454 Dexter Ave (call for tours 1 week in advance; Mon-Thurs 10am & 2pm, Fri 10am, Sat 10.30am & 1.30pm; $2; walk-through only on Sat 1.30-2pm), until his move to Atlanta in 1960. A mural along a basement wall chronicles his life, while the upstairs sanctuary, much as it was during his ministry, contains his former pulpit. One block away at the corner of Washington Avenue and Hull Street, in front of the Southern Poverty Law Center (which specializes in helping victims of racial attacks), the deeply moving Civil Rights Memorial (designed by Maya Lin) consists of a black granite table that records the names of forty martyrs murdered by white supremacists and police. Cool water pumps slowly and evenly across it, and the wall behind is engraved with the quotation used so often by Dr King, "(we will not be satisfied) until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Montgomery

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