![]() Blake Stilwell can be reached at He can also be found on Twitter or on Facebook. When Parks died in 2005, she laid in honor (the civilian equivalent to lying in state) at the Capitol Rotunda, one of only four people to ever do so. Parks, who became known as "the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," was among the first to ride the newly desegregated bus system. ![]() The city was forced to desegregate its bus system. ![]() In just more than a year, Montgomery's segregation laws were challenged in a federal court and struck down as violations of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause. ![]() Though segregated, the city stopped Black riders from using the bus system for a time as the buses were the frequent targets of violence. King and other leaders of the MIA were threatened at home, shot at, firebombed and more. White citizens of Montgomery formed their own action committee. The effort was not without risk or blowback from the racially segregated town. Martin Luther King and the Black citizens of Montgomery formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and organized the now-famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which put the city's public transportation system into serious financial distress. As a member of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Parks had been waiting for this moment to challenge Montgomery's unjust Jim Crow ordinances. ![]() Parks, sitting in the first row of the "colored" section, refused to relinquish her seat. The local segregation ordinances required Black people to sit in their own section at the back of the bus and then give up their seats if the Whites-only section was full. 1, 1955, Parks was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a White man. ![]()
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