Alabama, like Mississippi, largely ignored the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1958, a conflict over segregation in city parks brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Montgomery. The city closed its parks; King recommended that black parents attempt to enroll their children in city schools, expecting to establish cases testing the Alabama Pupil Placement Act. Montgomery Academy was the first segregation academy established in Alabama; others followed in the late 1960s.
