person arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nine months before Rosa Parks' action. Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon, president of the NAACP and secretary of the new Montgomery Improvement Association; and Clifford Durr (a white lawyer who, with his wife, Virginia Durr, was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement) searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws. Durr was concerned that an appeal of Parks's case would get tied up in the Alabama state courts and thought that they needed a way to get directly to federal courts. Gray did research for the lawsuit and consulted with NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys Robert L. Carter and Thurgood Marshall (who would later become United States Solicitor General and the first African-American United States Supreme Court Justice). Gray approached Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, all women who had been discriminated against by drivers enforcing segregation policy in the Montgomery bus system. They agreed to become plaintiffs in a federal civil action lawsuit, thus bypassing the Alabama court system. Reese dropped out of the case in February 1956 because of intimidation by members of the white community. She falsely claimed she had not agreed to the lawsuit, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to disbar Gray for supposedly improperly representing her. Decision On February 1, 1956, Gray filed the case Browder v. Gayle in U.S. District Court. Aurelia Browder was a Montgomery woman, W. A. Gayle was the mayor of Montgomery. On June 5, 1956, the District Court ruled that "the enforced segregation of black and white passengers on motor buses operating in the City of Montgomery violates the Constitution and laws of the United States" because the conditions deprived people of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court further enjoined Alabama and Montgomery from continuing to operate segregated buses. The state and city appealed the district court's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court's ruling and ordered Alabama and Montgomery to desegregate its buses. One month later, on December 17, the Supreme Court denied the state's petition for rehearing, and on December 20, the ruling was implemented after Gayle was handed official written notice by federal marshals. Commemoration In 2019 a statue of Rosa Parks was