The Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one of the most influential political bodies organizing poor African-Americans in the South during and after the Great Depression, it played a vital role in organizing African-Americans during a period where many activists would later become leaders of the emerging Civil Rights Movement, including which activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and would later commit an act of civil disobedience launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA
The Alabama Chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one of the most influential political bodies organizing poor African-Americans in the South during and after the Great Depression.
 Started with just two members, the Alabama chapter CPUSA was established in Birmingham Alabama in 1928, and remained active until it was forced underground by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and police repression, and was disbanded when it was outlawed in 1951.
 During the height of Jim Crow and the Great Depression, the Alabama CPUSA organized some of the poorest African-American communities in the country, and was successful in leading organization drives in multiple industries including the Sharecroppers' Union, mine, mill, and industrial workers, as well as leading numerous campaigns to organize unemployed workers.
 The Alabama CPUSA also played a vital role in organizing African-Americans during a period where many activists would later become leaders of the emerging Civil Rights Movement.
 Ashbury Howard, who later was a significant leader in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement, and Rosa Parks, who would later commit an act of civil disobedience launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were both trained and active with the Alabama CPUSA.
Glenn E. Smiley
Glenn Smiley (April 19, 1910 – September 14, 1993) was a white civil rights consultant and leader.
 He closely studied the doctrine of Mahatma Gandhi and became convinced that racism and segregation were most likely to be overcome without the use of violence, and began studying and teaching peaceful tactics.
 As an employee of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), he visited Martin Luther King, Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956 during the Montgomery bus boycott where Smiley advised King and his associates on nonviolent tactics, and was able to convince King that nonviolence was a feasible solution to racial tension.
 Smiley, together with Bayard Rustin and others, helped convince King and his associates that complete nonviolence and nonviolent direct action were the most effective methods and tools to use during protest.
 After the Civil Rights Movement, Smiley continued to employ nonviolence and worked for several organizations promoting peace in South American countries.
 Just three years before him 1993 death, Smiley opened the King Center in Los Angeles. Women's Political Council
The Women's Political Council, founded in Montgomery, Alabama, was an organization that was part of the Civil Rights Movement that was formed to address the racial issues in the city.
 Members included Mary Fair Burks, Jo Ann Robinson, Irene West, Thelma Glass, and Uretta Adair.
 The WPC was the first group to officially call for a boycott of the bus system during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, beginning in December 1955.
 The group led efforts in the early 1950s to secure better treatment for Black bus passengers, and in December 1955 it initiated the thirteen month bus boycott.
 They helped organize communications to get it started, as well as to support it, including giving people rides who were boycotting the buses.
 The African Americans of Montgomery upheld the boycott for more than a year. E. D. Nixon
Edgar Daniel Nixon (July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987), known as E. D. Nixon, was an African-American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery Bus Boycott there in 1955.
 The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy.
 It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, "Browder v. Gayle" (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation. Cleveland Court Apartments 620–638
The Cleveland Court Apartments 620–638 is a historic apartment building in the Cleveland Court Apartment Complex in Montgomery, Alabama.
 It is significant to the history of the modern Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
 Unit 634 was home to civil rights activist Rosa Parks, her husband Raymond, and her mother, Leona McCauley, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956.
 The building was placed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on March 30, 1989 and the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 2001. Septima Poinsette Clark
Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898 – December 15, 1987) was an American educator and civil rights activist.
 Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement.
 Septima Clark's work was commonly under appreciated by Southern male activists.
 She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
 Martin Luther King, Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement".
 Clark's argument for her position in the Civil Rights Movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't." Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990) was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr..
 In 1955, he collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
 In 1957, Abernathy co-founded, and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
 Following the assassination of King, Abernathy became president of the SCLC.
 As president of the SCLC, he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. during 1968.
 Abernathy also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
 He later returned to the ministry, and in 1989 — the year before his death — Abernathy wrote, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography", a controversial autobiography about his and King's involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery To Memphis is a 1970 American documentary film biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and his creation and leadership of the nonviolent campaign for civil rights and social and economic justice in the Civil Rights Movement.
 It uses only original newsreel and other primary material, unvarnished and unretouched, and covers the period from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 through his assassination in 1968.
 The original newsreel segments are framed by celebrity narrators Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Anthony Quinn, Clarence Williams III, and Joanne Woodward.
 The movie was produced by Ely Landau and directed by Sidney Lumet in what was the only documentary he would direct in his whole film career.
 Richard J. Kaplan was the associate producer in charge of production. Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott, a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
 The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, "Browder v. Gayle", took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
 Many important figures in the Civil Rights Movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.