Violence
An excerpt from "Report on Montgomery a Year After" discusses the violence that followed the boycott:
"A year ago, in the first days of bus integration, Montgomery was a city caught in a swelling tide of racial violence. Telephoned and mailed warnings couched in foul language, shootings at buses, dynamitings of homes and churches--these suddenly threatened to become the frightening pattern of everyday life in a proud city once known throughout the South for its quiet and genial ways. The high point in this campaign of terror was reached one night when four Negro churches and the home of a young white Lutheran, Robert Graetz, were bombed in the space of a single hour. Thereupon the City Commissioners, avowed members of the militantly segregationist White Citizens Council, ignoring the plea of the bus companies for police protection, ordered the integrated buses off the streets.
For six days and nights the city was without a public transportation system of any kind. A complete breakdown in the economic life of the community, and in law and order itself seemed imminent...
Integration on the buse since that initial threatening period has proceeded orderly enough. One reason is that many Negro passengers (not the young, however) continue to sit in the rear of the buses by themselves. There are occasional minor incidents, but no serious flare-up has occurred.
Although the white people of Montgomery hardly regard the end of segregation on the buses as a gratifying change, an interesting new atttitude toward the Negro does seem to be developing. This can best be described, perhaps, as a reflection of the secret admiration aroused by the unexampled display of Negro unity, fortitude, and leadership."
Peace
Eventually, our nation found peace. Though America is not perfect, it is progressing. In the words of Claudette Colvin:
"I know that segregation isn't dead-- just look as schools and neighborhoods and workplaces, and you can see that it's still all over America...But at least those degrading signs, 'White' and 'Colored', are gone...We forced white people to take a different view...The civil rights movement cleared the way legally so we could progress. I'm glad I was part of that...I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no way to get it...You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did."