Claudette Colvin was in Montgomery during the boycott’s end. She had given birth to her son Raymond that March and was navigating the earliest months of motherhood while the legal and political machinery she had helped set in motion reached its resolution.
The photographic record of the boycott’s end centers on Parks and King at the front of the bus. This is the image that most people who know the Montgomery bus boycott story carry with them. The four plaintiffs whose federal lawsuit produced the constitutional ruling are not in that photograph.
## The Carpool Network
One of the logistical achievements of the Montgomery bus boycott that is sometimes underemphasized in accounts focused on the legal and political dimensions was the carpool network that replaced the bus system for 381 days.
Montgomery’s Black community organized a system of private cars and pickup points that approximated the bus routes and moved workers, students, and residents across the city every day for more than a year. The organization of this network required coordination, communication, financial resources, and sustained collective commitment at a scale that makes it remarkable even in retrospect.
Churches served as organizational centers. The community’s church infrastructure — the networks of relationships, the physical spaces, the communication channels — provided the skeleton on which the carpool network was built. Individual car owners volunteered their vehicles and their time. People with no cars walked. The city attempted to undermine the carpool network by arresting organizers and by pressuring insurance companies to cancel policies on cars used in the boycott.