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Force of The Soul In 1955, a Negro seamstress took a seat on a public transportation bus in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. When asked to vacate the seat for a white man, the years of oppression, indignities, and segregation from the white society, finally reached a limit within her. Rosa Parks firmly yet quietly refused to give up her seat to the white man. Her arrest became the stimulus for a boycott of the city’s segregated bus system. The black rights activist, E.O. Nixon, made a call to Martin Luther King Jr., the young minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church asking King to join the boycott that would eventually end segregation in Montgomery. Agreeing to limited participation in the movement, King soon found himself elected as the leader for the Montgomery Improvement Association for the boycott campaign. King’s feelings of fear and inadequacy to lead the boycott movement dissipated after his first speech was met with arousing approval from some 4,000 blacks who had gathered to join the boycott. It was in this speech that King acknowledged the white man’s oppression of the black man, but encouraged the group to over come that oppression with nonviolent resistance based on Christian principles