The Montgomery grand jury indicts 115 leaders (later reduced to 89) of the Montgomery movement on misdemeanor charges of violating Alabama’s antiboycott law. Late in the evening, King speaks on the telephone with Abernathy about the indictments.
Gray is charged by the Montgomery grand jury with “unlawful appearance as an attorney” for representing Reese after she had withdrawn from the suit. King drives to Atlanta, where he releases a statement condemning the grand jury’s actions.
King returns to Montgomery and addresses an MIA mass meeting at First Baptist Church.
In a Chicago news conference, King reports that a grand jury is investigating the “legality” of the bus boycott and predicts that several leaders of the Montgomery movement will be indicted.
Judge Eugene Carter directs the Montgomery County grand jury to determine whether the boycott of Montgomery buses violates Alabama’s antiboycott law.
Eleven thousand people attending a Citizens Council rally in Montgomery cheer Mayor Gayle and Police Commissioner Sellers for their support of segregation on Montgomery buses.
In a telegram to President Eisenhower, AFL-CIO president George Meany urges an FBI investigation of violence in Montgomery and elsewhere in Alabama.
In a Montgomery Advertiser article, “Group to Study Possibility of Ending Boycott of Buses,” which reported that the MIA executive board will consider ending the boycott, King says that any recommendations agreed upon by the board would be voted on by a full meeting of the MIA at the next mass meeting.
The MIA executive board meets. King denies that the meeting had been called to discuss the end of the boycott.
King and the MIA executive board approve a security patrol at mass meetings and agree to move MIA headquarters from the Alabama Negro Baptist Center to Abernathy’s First Baptist Church. King presides at an MIA-NAACP meeting at the Baptist Center.
Gray and Charles D. Langford file a federal district court petition (which becomes Aurelia S. Browder v. William A. Gayle) on behalf of five Montgomery women to enjoin the city commissioners from enforcing segregation on city buses.
