During the late 1950s and throughout the1960s the struggle for civil rights in America threatened to make the country a “house divided” at the level it was during the1850s and 1860s. During this often violent and ideologically divisive period many events unfolded on the grass roots level that had a significant impact on civil rights struggle. Events that became significant included the Freedom Riders, Brown v. The Board of Education, et. al., the Birmingham sit-ins, mass marches and others that helped pave the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Bill. The galvanizing leader of this movement, of course, was Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s Strive Toward Freedom outlined the nonviolence principles which he believed would turn public sentiment in favor of those who loved as opposed to those using hate and violence. King believed nonviolent protest was critical as a civil rights movement tool because his end objective was a community at peace with itself. King understood that until the chain of hate and violence were broken society would not be united. King’s views of nonviolent resistance were based on the philosophy of Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau. However before some of the events described above unfolded, an extremely significant event in 1955 occurred which helped bring national attention to the black struggle for civil rights, and ultimately paved the way for legislation that would ban segregation. The event was also significant because it was carried out in such a way that it demonstrated the efficacy of King’s nonviolent method of protest. More remarkably, this event—the Montgomery bus boycott—was catalyze by unlikely individual, a forty-two year old seamstress. Rosa Parks was her name and today she is considered a symbolic figure in the civil rights movement. Parks entered a city bus and sat at the front of the black section of seats, as all public transportation was segregated in Alabama. When some w...