The Children Coming On...

On the 40th anniversary of the event credited with sparking the modern civil rights movement, this anthology draws on oral histories of the participants, court documents, news clippings, and several previously published books to give an overview of how history was made in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955-56. Historian J. Mills Thornton provides the political and social background of pre-boycott life; attorney Fred Gray shows how black citizens organized and fought segregation in the streets and in the courts; journalist Frank Sikora profiles Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., and the court case that ultimately ended segregated bus seating; and activist/author Willy Leventhal challenges accepted wisdom with a reexamination of the supportive roles played by a few key white Montgomerians and the effect this had on the subsequent life and civil rights career of Martin Luther King, Jr. Throughout, the voices of boycott leaders such as E.D. Nixon, Thelma Glass, Johnnie Carr, Robert Nesbitt, Idessa Redden, and many others lend their recollections to the protest that began with the December 1, 1995, arrest of Rosa Parks and ended 381 days later after the U.S. Supreme Court action overturning local segregation laws.