Volume 3: Birth of a New Age,
December 1955-December 1956

King and the MIA leaders-including Abernathy, Jo Ann Robinson, and attorney Fred D. Gray-wired this letter to National City Lines in Chicago, owner of the Montgomery bus franchise, after an unsuccessful meeting that day with city commissioners and local bus company officials. The officials had refused to change bus segregation policies insisting they were required by law; King had countered that they could be modified within the existing segregation laws. National City Lines vice president Kenneth E. Totten arrived in Montgomery the following week.

To The National City Lines, Inc.
6I6 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill.

Over a period of years the Negro passengers on the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. have been subjected to humiliation, threats, intimidation, and death through bus driver action.

The Negro has been inconvenienced in the use of the city bus lines by the operators in all instances in which the bus has been crowded. He has been forced to give up his seat if a white person has been standing.

Repeated conferences with the bus officials have met with failure. Today a meeting was held with Mr. J. H. Bagley and Attorney Jack Crenshaw as representatives of the bus company, and Mayor W. A. Gayle and Associate Commissioners Frank Parks and Clyde Sellers. At which time as an attempt to end the Monday through Thursday protest, the following three proposals were made:

I. Courteous treatment by bus drivers.
2. Seating of Negro passengers from rear to front of bus, and white passengers from front to rear on "first-come-first-serve basis with no seats reserved for any race.
3. Employment of Negro bus operators in predominantly Negro residential sections.

The above proposals, and the resolutions which will follow, were drafted and adopted in a mass meeting of more than 5,000 regular bus riders. These proposals were denied in the meeting with the city officials and representatives of the bus company.

Since 44% of the city's population is Negro, and since 75% of the bus riders are Negro, we urge you to send a representative to Montgomery to arbitrate.

The Montgomery Improvement Association
The Rev. M. L. King, Pres.
The Rev. U. J. Fields, Sec'y.

TLc. MLKP-MBU: Box 6.

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