Obituary: James F Blake

On Thursday December 1 1955, James Blake, who has died aged 89, began his usual daily stint driving a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. By the end of his shift he had precipitated a social revolution which reverberates across America to this day - not least at this week's Oscar ceremonies.

Blake's enforcement of a segregationist local bylaw brought the then little-known black clergyman, the Rev Martin Luther King, roaring into action. The resulting year-long boycott of the city's bus service, in protest against Blake's actions that day, resulted in one of the US Supreme Court's major decisions against racial discrimination.

Though the overwhelming proportion of Montgomery's bus users were black, company rules stipulated that its vehicles' 10 front seats must be reserved for whites and the rear 10 for blacks. The middle 16 were available for any passenger, at the driver's discretion, provided no white passenger was left standing.

Rosa Parks, a middle-aged, black seamstress, would not normally have boarded any bus driven by Blake, with whom she had had several disputes.

Once, after she had paid her fare at the front, he had ordered her to board the bus at the rear and then, before she could do so, driven off. On other occasions he had ostentatiously driven past the stop at which she was waiting.

On this December afternoon Mrs Parks, loaded with Christmas shopping, was sitting in the central section of the bus. After three stops, a white man boarded and had to stand. It now fell to Blake to order Mrs Parks to surrender her seat to the white passenger. Since the company rules also stipulated that no black passenger could sit alongside a white, the three people alongside Mrs Parks were also required to stand at the back of an already crowded bus, leaving three empty seats in the middle.

By her own account, Mrs Parks had already had a hard day at work and this was the last straw. When no one moved, Blake came back saying "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." The other three complied, but Mrs Parks said, "No. I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen." Blake warned her that he would have her arrested. "You can do that," she said and kept her seat.

What Blake could not have known was that Mrs Parks was the secretary of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and had recently attended a multiracial workshop in neighbouring Tennessee, instructing activists in civil disobedience. Though she had not gone out of her way to provoke the incident, the lessons she learned at the Highlander Folk School were not wasted.

Her tiny, defiant figure, proclaiming "I paid my fare like everyone else," was led away by two deeply embarrassed policemen. When she rang her husband, NAACP colleagues swiftly turned up to post bail. The following day, amid a storm of publicity, Rosa Parks was fined $10 with $4 court costs and the city's black population geared up for action.

From the following Monday they refused to use any of the city's bus services. Some formed car pools and many black taxi drivers agreed to carry passengers around the city for 10 cents, the cost of the bus fare. The boycott was maintained for 381 days, at the end of which the bus company had lost 65% of it business.

Looking back on his unintended eruption into history years later, Blake said defensively: "I wasn't trying to do anything to that Parks woman except do my job. She was in violation of the city codes, so what was I supposed to do? That damn bus was full and she wouldn't move back. I had my orders."

He remained with the bus company for a further 19 years, retiring in 1974. They were years of change which Blake could never have imagined when he confronted his stubborn passenger. As the boycott imposed growing losses on Montgomery's central business area, the city authorities fought back in the only way they knew. They issued injunctions against car pooling and arrested some of the black leaders for conspiracy.

But the courts were against them. Three federal judges ruled that Alabama's segregated seating laws were unconstitutional. Then, on November 13 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld this judgment, a ruling that applied nationwide. Later that day Martin Luther King and a white clergyman boarded a bus in Montgomery and settled down side by side. No one challenged them.

· James F Blake, bus driver, born 1913; died March 21 2002