The Reverend King was fined $500 and costs, but the fine was suspended pending an appeal.

The 17 week bus boycott began on 1st December 1955, after 42 year-old African-American Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. Segregation laws in Montgomery ordered separate seating areas on bus's for blacks and whites, with the blacks having to give up their seat to a white if required to do so.

Mrs Parks had not been the first person to be arrested in these cases, but she was one of the most prominent in the black community.

Her actions led, four days later, to a virtually universal boycott of the town's bus's by black passengers which hit bus company revenues.

The Reverend King was convicted under a 1921 law intended to combat trade union disputes; the judge said he had been lenient on him because he advocated nonviolence.