Nov. 13, 1956: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a ruling against racial segregation on Alabama’s public buses

Thursday 13 November 2008

On Nov. 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Alabama district court’s ruling to disallow racial segregation on public buses. In Browder v. Gayle, the district court decided that the city of Montgomery’s racial-segregation laws were unconstitutional; the Supreme Court’s support of that decision eventually ended a boycott of Montgomery’s public buses that lasted more than a year. The city then enacted an ordinance allowing black bus passengers, who previously were required to either sit in the back rows of a bus or stand if the bus began to fill with white passengers, to have access to any seat.