ASC is a historically Black university that, in the Jim Crow era, was one of the only institutions of higher education available to Black students in Alabama. Many of the influential people in the Montgomery activist community attended ASC.

This case was the first major lawsuit to challenge segregation on a constitutional basis, and succeeded in making school segregation illegal. Lawyer Fred Gray was inspired to formulate the Browder v. Gayle case after the success of Brown v. Board of Education.

The Montgomery bus boycott is often credited with sparking the large-scale civil rights movement, but it was not the first time that Black people protested by refusing to ride city buses. In 1953, a housekeeper named Martha White sparked a boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when she was kicked off a bus for sitting in a seat reserved for white passengers. The Baton Rouge boycott inspired the organizers of the Montgomery boycott.