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Social Movements and Social-Change Litigation: Synergy in the Montgomery Bus Protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Christopher Coleman ,
Laurence D. Nee  and
Leonard S. Rubinowitz
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Abstract

Two competing schools of thought have emerged to explain how the Montgomery bus protest of 1955–56 brought about changes on the city's Jim Crow buses. The dominant explanation attributes the changes to the bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Montgomery Improvement Association. A second interpretation emphasizes the critical role of the Supreme Court's decision striking down the state and local bus segregation laws. This essay prooides a third explanation: that these two strategies–the boycott and the litigation–interacted, each shaping and reinforcing the other. Each strategy war a critical part of the struggle, but neither brought change by itself. This essay argues that the two strategies of the Montgomery protest created a synergy that was the key to bringing about changes on the buses.

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Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Fall 2005 , pp. 663 - 736
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2005 

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