At Crozer Seminary, Martin Luther King had learned about India's great leader Mohandas Gandhi , who had shown the world a new way to fight for an idea. Gandhi, like the American writer Henry David Thoreau, believed that unjust laws could be challenged peacefully with something called civil disobedience. Gandhi led millions of Indians in nonviolent boycotts and marches to protest British rule in India. In Montgomery, King now believes that Gandhi's form of protest can be used to overcome the evil of segregation. Along with other leaders in the black community he calls for a complete boycott of the city buses .

Jo Ann Robinson is a college professor and president of the Women's Political Council in Montgomery. She begins to organize the boycott. To show their solidarity she wants blacks not to ride buses on Monday, the day Rosa Parks will be in court. Robinson and some friends stay up most of the night printing leaflets to hand out in church. They say, "We are asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere."

Sunday morning, in their sermons, Montgomery's black ministers urge everyone to stay off the buses . They know that won't be easy. Those who ride the buses are mostly the poorer citizens. They are people who need to get to work. Some are elderly. It is December, and cold. Some can find rides, but many will have to walk miles. And all fear white violence. It is customary to intimidate black people who try to stand up for their rights .

But something startling is happening in Montgomery. Like Rosa Parks, most black people are no longer afraid. They stay off the buses on Monday. And on Tuesday. And then all week. And all month. And on and on, in rain and cold and sleet and through the heat of summer. They share rides; they carpool; they walk. Montgomery's bigots decide to take action. Houses are burned, churches are bombed, and shots are fired . But Montgomery's black people don't back down. They stay off the buses.

Reporters begin to come to Montgomery to see what is happening. Television crews come too. Soon people around the nation, and around the world, are watching the marchers of Montgomery. They march to work; they march to organized carpool centers. When they are arrested, they march to jail.

And so, while the segregationists use violence to pursue their ideals, Montgomery's black community protests non-violently with unflinching courage. They don't scream back. They maintain their dignity. They use what Martin Luther King calls "the weapon of love." King later says, "I look back over Montgomery and think of the fact that for all of these days—381 days—more than 99 9/10% of the Negro citizens participated in the boycott. They confronted harassing experiences, they confronted physical violence, and never did they retaliate with a single act of physical violence."

The weapon of love wins the battle. Thirteen months after Rosa Parks's arrest , the Supreme Court rules that segregation on Alabama buses is unconstitutional. The boycott is over ! Martin Luther King, Jr., E.D. Nixon, Ralph Abernathy (a black minister), and George Smiley (a Texas-born white minister) climb aboard Montgomery's first integrated bus and all sit up front. The people of Montgomery have not only changed their world, they have changed their times.