<P> African - American passengers were also attacked by bus drivers and shortchanged and left stranded after paying their fares . A number of reasons have been given for why bus drivers acted in this manner, including racism, frustrations over labor disputes and labor conditions, and increased animosity towards blacks in reaction to the 1954 Brown decision, with many of the drivers joining the White Citizens Councils as a result of the decision . </P> <P> The boycott also took place within a larger statewide and national movement for civil rights, including court cases such as Morgan v. Virginia, the earlier Baton Rouge bus boycott, and the arrest of Claudette Colvin . </P> <P> The NAACP had accepted and litigated other cases, including that of Irene Morgan in 1946, which resulted in a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that segregated interstate bus lines violated the Commerce Clause . That victory, however, overturned state segregation laws only insofar as they applied to travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel, and Southern bus companies immediately circumvented the Morgan ruling by instituting their own Jim Crow regulations . Further incidents continued to take place in Montgomery, including the arrest for disorderly conduct in May 1951 of Lillie Mae Bradford, who refused to leave the white passengers' section until the bus driver corrected an incorrect charge on her transfer ticket . </P> <P> On February 25, 1953, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana city - parish council passed Ordinance 222, after the city saw protesting from African - Americans when the council raised the city's bus fares . The ordinance abolished race - based reserved seating requirements and allowed the admission of African - Americans in the front sections of city buses if there were no white passengers present, but still required African - Americans to enter from the rear, rather than the front of the buses . However, the ordinance was largely unenforced by the city bus drivers . The drivers later went on strike after city authorities refused to arrest Rev. T.J. Jemison for sitting in a front row . Four days after the strike began, Louisiana Attorney General and former Baton Rouge mayor Fred S. LeBlanc declared the ordinance unconstitutional under Louisiana state law . This led Rev. Jemison to organize what historians believe to be the first bus boycott of the civil rights movement . The boycott ended after eight days when an agreement was reached to only retain the first two front and back rows as racially reserved seating areas . </P>

Who is the person responsible for launching the birmingham bus boycott