Montgomery Bus Boycott

At 9:15 P.M., while King is speaking before two thousand congregants at a mass meeting at First Baptist Church, his home is bombed. Coretta Scott King and their daughter, Yolanda Denise, are not injured. King addresses a large crowd that gathers outside the house, pleading for nonviolence. The city commission promises police protection for King and offers a $500 reward for the capture and conviction of the persons responsible for the bombing. The Kings stay at the home of Dexter deacon J. T. Brooks. Late that night King, Sr., his daughter Christine, son A.

During an MIA meeting at St. John’s AME Church, King urges the audience to forgive the seven white men charged with acts of violence against integrated buses and boycott leaders. 

King addresses an MIA meeting at Mt. Zion AME Zion Church. 

At a Montgomery press conference, King denounces a plan by white business leaders to establish a private bus line and downplays reports of his collapse the previous evening.

King reportedly collapses while speaking during an MIA meeting at Bethel Baptist Church. 

While King is still in Montgomery, black leaders in Atlanta name him chairman of the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. King later returns to the conference where he and other leaders issue telegrams to President Dwight Eisenhower and other government officials, urging their support in ending southern segregation.

In the early morning four black churches and the parsonages of MIA leaders Robert Graetz and Ralph Abernathy are bombed in Montgomery. The Montgomery City Commission halts all bus service in the wake of the morning’s violence. King and Abernathy, in Atlanta for the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration at Ebenezer Baptist Church, are forced to return home and miss the opening session. In the afternoon King meets with FBI agents in Montgomery and requests that they investigate the bombings. 

After anonymous handbills discrediting him appear in Montgomery’s black community, King dismisses the circulars as a futile attempt to undermine the movement.

The Montgomery City Commission decides to hire extra police and extend a 5 P.M. curfew for one week to prevent further violence against newly integrated buses. King and other Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) leaders meet with bus company officials to discuss the situation.