For 381 days in 1955 and 1956, the Black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama boycotted the city bus system. Black riders had been mistreated on public transit all over the country for decades, and the national coverage of the Montgomery Bus Boycott intensified the public conversation about Civil Rights. By the time the Supreme Court decided that discrimination on busses was a violation of the 14th amendment, boycott leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr were household names and the Civil Rights movements was on the national stage.