“We are having a difficult time here but we are not discouraged.”

‘5,000 at Meeting Outline Boycott; Bullet Clips Bus’ Montgomery Advertiser, 6 December 1955 © Montgomery Advertiser

The community too had reached a breaking point.  After talking to Parks late that night, Gray then called Jo Ann Robinson, the head of the Women’s Political Council.  And it was the Woman’s Political Council which decided to call for a boycott on the Monday when Parks was set to be arraigned in court.

In the middle of the night,  Robinson, who was a professor at Alabama State College, snuck into the college and, with the help of two students and a colleague who let her into the mimeograph room, ran off thousands of leaflets reading “Another woman has been arrested on the bus…If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue…We are therefore asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial.”  At about 3:00 am, Robinson called E.D. Nixon to apprise him of their plan.  The next morning, WPC members picked up the leaflets calling for a bus boycott on Monday and distributed them all over town.

Related primary source: Montgomery Bus Boycott Scrapbook, November 1955 – April 1957