Aurelia Eliscera Shines Browder was born on January 29, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama. In April 1955, her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white passenger led to her arrest. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in December 1955, she served as a volunteer driver for people who refused to ride the buses. On February 1, 1956, as lead plaintiff, Browder joined with Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald, who had also been arrested for the same offense, in filing suit in U.S. Federal District Court to challenge the constitutionality of Montgomery's bus segregation statutes. On June 5, 1956, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the statutes were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that ruling in Browder vs. Gayle, and Montgomery city buses were desegregated on December 22, 1956, as a direct result of the case. Browder later graduated with honors in 1956 from Alabama State Teachers College, now Alabama State University, and continued her civil rights work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Women's Political Council, and the Montgomery Improvement Association, while also tutoring blacks for voter registration exams. Her primary residence during the bus desegregation case and until her death in 1971 was a one-story brick house at 1012 Highland Avenue in Centennial Hill, once Montgomery's most prestigious black community.

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Montgomery, Alabama · USA