Mary Fair Burks was an American educator, scholar, and activist during the Civil Rights Movement from Montgomery, Alabama. Burks founded the Women’s Political Council in 1946, which helped initiate the Montgomery Bus Boycott following the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955.
Burks, 1976
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
Rosa Parks on a Montgomery bus on December 21, 1956, the day Montgomery's public transportation system was legally integrated. Behind Parks is Nicholas C. Chriss, a UPI reporter covering the event.
Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation
A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest
The National City Lines bus, No. 2857, on which Rosa Parks rode before she was arrested (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132), is now on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.