Creating A Perfect Storm

People you might not know about who contributed to the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Jo ann Robinson

A professor of English at Alabama State College in 1955. As head of the Women’s Political Council she had written to Mayor Gayle in 1954. In her letter she pressed him to improve conditions for black passengers on Montgomery’s buses and threatening a boycott if this didn’t happen. Immediately following the arrest of Rosa Parks she put this plan into action. Through the night of December 1st 1955 and the following day, she and two of her most trusted male students illicitly printed, bundled and distributed tens of thousands of leaflets calling on the black population to stay off the buses on Monday December 5th 1955, the day Rosa Parks would appear in court. Photo: taken during her booking along with other leaders of the boycott on February 21st 1956.

Aurelia Browder

A seamstress and midwife, in her 30s she decided to earn a degree at Alabama State College. She was involved in the drive to increase black voter registration. On April 29th 1955 she was ejected from a Montgomery city bus for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. She agreed to be the lead plaintiff in Browder v Gayle, the civil suit brought by the NAACP challenging segregation on buses in Alabama. On December 20th 1956, following the Supreme Court ruling in their favour, state mandated segregation on Alabama’s buses officially ended. Photo: courtesy of the Browder family

Juliet Hampton Morgan

A teacher and librarian in Montgomery. Born into the top tier of Montgomery’s white population, Miss Morgan was a regular contributor to the letters column of the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper. In 1952 she called for the words “White Supremacy” to be removed from the state’s ballot papers. On December 12th 1955 she was the first white resident to publicly express support for the boycotters in the pages of the city’s largest newspaper. Photo: Alabama Department of Archives and History. From a scrapbook created after her death in 1957 by Lila Bess Morgan, her mother.