She was arrested in October 1955 at the age of 18 in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus system.
[1] On February 1, 1956, Smith was one of five women named as plaintiffs in the federal civil suit, Browder v. Gayle, challenging the constitutionality of the state and local bus segregation laws.
The ruling was upheld by the United States Supreme Court on November 13 in a landmark decision, and in December it declined to reconsider.
[2] At the age of 18, on October 21, 1955, Smith was returning home on the Montgomery city bus, and was ordered to relinquish her seat to a white passenger who had boarded later.
Nixon, leading some of the bus boycott movement, shared information that Smith's father was an alcoholic, and she was not the right symbol to withstand the publicity.
[2] Attorney Fred Gray recruited Smith and her father to become plaintiffs in a federal civil rights class-action lawsuit to end segregated seating on city buses.
)[6][7] The women, other than Reese, testified before a three-judge panel, and on June 13, 1956, the court ruled that the laws were unconstitutional, based on equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Lawyer Morris Dees represented their suit, which called out the YMCA for not allowing her and her sister's children into their summer camp program.