1954:
May 21 - Professor Jo Ann Robinson writes a warning to the mayor of Montgomery of the possibility of a bus boycott.
September 1 - Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.
1955:
March 2 - Claudette Colvin, a fifteen year old African American, is arrested for violating the bus segregation laws.
October 21 - Mary Louise Smith, a eighteen year old African American, is arrested for violating the bus segregation laws.
December 1 - Rosa Parks, an African American, is arrested for violating the bus segregation laws and is charged with disorderly conduct.
December 2 - The stage for the bus boycott is being set by the black Montgomery activists, including Jo Ann Robinson, Fred Gray, and E. D. Nixon.
December 5 - Rosa Parks is convicted and fined by the city court. A one-day boycott of the city buses has 90 percent of regular black riders staying off the buses. Reverend King Jr. is elected the president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association. First MIA meeting is held at the Holt Street Baptist Church, where the several thousand black citizens who attend support the continuing of the bus boycott.
December 8 - A proposal about a bus seating policy that is more fair to the blacks but is still segregated is made by the MIA spokesperson to the city and bus company officials ends in a deadlock.
December 13 - MIA begins to operate a car pool system.
December 16 - A biracial committee is supposedly formed by the mayor to negotiate a compromise after the vice president of the bus company meets with the city, local bus officials, and leaders of MIA.
December 19 - The biracial committee meets but cannot reach a compromise.
1956:
January 9 - MIA leaders meet with city commissioners.
January 23 - A tougher policy is announced by