00:00The December 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a bus
00:22to white passengers sparked the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott.
00:27The boycott, against the segregated bus system, was supposed to last one day.
00:34But an estimated 17,000 African Americans supported it.
00:39The boycott lasted more than a year.
00:42The community's enthusiasm led organizers to extend the protest and appoint a spokesman.
00:49That person turned out to be a young Montgomery minister, Dr. Martin Luther King.
00:54Opponents of the boycott resorted to many tactics to deter and intimidate protesters from participating.
01:02Among those tactics, legal harassment.
01:06On February 21, 1956, a Montgomery, Alabama grand jury indicted 89 leaders of the boycott,
01:13including Dr. King and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy.
01:17Their crime, violating a 1921 state statute forbidding boycotts without, quote, just cause.
01:28Along with the indictment, the grand jury issued a report repudiating the anti-segregation efforts.
01:36Grand jurors wrote, quote,
01:38Of the nearly 90 people indicted, Dr. King was the only one to be prosecuted.
01:51He was convicted, fined $1,000, and given a suspended jail sentence of one year of hard labor.
01:58As the strength of the boycotters grew, the intimidation turned violent.
02:06The homes of several leaders, including Dr. King's house, were bombed.
02:11On the night of August 25, 1956, several sticks of dynamite were thrown into the yard of Pastor Robert Gretz,
02:19an outspoken supporter of the boycott.
02:22Pastor Gretz was a young white minister serving the city's primarily black Trinity Lutheran Church.
02:27He was also a member of the Montgomery Improvement Association,
02:32the primary group that planned and guided the city's bus boycott.
02:37Pastor Gretz was in Tennessee at the time of the explosion.
02:41His wife and children also were not home, and no one was injured.
02:46Shortly after the boycott began, organizers filed a federal lawsuit
02:50challenging the constitutionality of Montgomery's segregated buses.
02:55The lawsuit worked its way through the courts as the boycott continued.
03:01And on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that public bus segregation was unconstitutional
03:10and ordered Montgomery buses to integrate.
03:14On December 21, 1956, one day after the Montgomery bus system was served the court's order,
03:21the boycott ended, and the city's black citizens resumed riding the buses.
03:28Leave a picture of my heart, and the city's black Johanna who were setting it up.
03:30It was a billboard for the COMPUTER.
03:46You did not want to go that far away now.
03:48Once we took a fishing on the shore, you shamed at the creek,
03:51and we did not where to go next week.
03:52No, we wanted to landier than the park's ORN.
03:53The schlep oriented.
03:55Dominion was one of the real properties that we just went under.
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