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.

Martin Luther King Jr. described Nixon as "one of the chief voices of the Negro community in the area of civil rights," and "a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the long oppressed people of the State of Alabama.

[2] As a child, Nixon received 16 months of formal education, as black students were ill-served in the segregated public school system.

[1] After working in a train station baggage room, Nixon rose to become a Pullman car porter, which was a well-respected position with good pay.

He also served as an unelected advocate for the African-American community, helping individuals negotiate with white officeholders, policemen, and civil servants.

In the early 1950s, Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women's Political Council, decided to mount a court challenge to the discriminatory seating practices on Montgomery's municipal buses, along with a boycott of the bus company.

A Montgomery ordinance reserved the front seats on these buses for white passengers only, forcing African-American riders to sit in the back.

For instance, 15-year-old student Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in March 1955, nine months before Parks' action.

(In 1956, Colvin and Smith were among five originally included in the successful case, Browder v. Gayle, filed on behalf of them specifically and representing black riders who had been treated unjustly on the city buses.

Nixon could not attend because of an out-of-town business trip; he took precautions to see that no one was elected to lead the boycott campaign until he returned.

[8] Nixon shared his labor and civil rights contacts with the MIA, organizing financial and other resources to help manage and support the boycott.

Despite fierce political opposition, police coercion, personal threats, and their own sacrifices, the blacks of Montgomery held the boycott.

Attorneys Fred Gray and Charles Langford filed the petition in federal district court for it to review the state and city laws on bus segregation in the case that became known as Browder v. Gayle (1956).

They filed on behalf of the five Montgomery women who originally refused to give up their seats on city buses: Claudette Colvin, Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanatte Reese.

)[6] On June 5, 1956, a three-judge panel of the US District Court ruled on Browder v. Gayle and determined that Montgomery's segregation law was unconstitutional, violating the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.

At a later rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden, Nixon talked about the symbolism of the boycott to an audience of supporters:I'm from Montgomery, Alabama, a city that's known as the Cradle of the Confederacy, that had stood still for more than ninety-three years until Rosa L. Parks was arrested and thrown in jail like a common criminal.... Fifty thousand people rose up and caught hold to the Cradle of the Confederacy and began to rock it till the Jim Crow rockers began to reel and the segregated slats began to fall out.

He expressed resentment that King and Abernathy had received most of the credit for the boycott, as opposed to the local activists who had already spent years organizing against racism.

However, King admired Nixon, describing him as "one of the chief voices of the Negro community in the area of civil rights," and "a symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the long oppressed people of the State of Alabama.

"[1] Nixon resigned his post as MIA treasurer in 1957, writing a bitter letter to King complaining that he had been treated as a child and a "newcomer.