Editing Mary Louise Smith (activist) (section)

==Early life and education==
Mary Louise Smith was born in [[Montgomery, Alabama]] into a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] family. She and all her siblings attended and graduated from [[St. Jude Educational Institute]]. She was baptized at [[City of St. Jude|St. Jude's Church]], where she was a parishioner.<ref name="Black Catholic Messenger" />

At the age of 18, on October 21, 1955, Smith was returning home on the Montgomery city bus, and was ordered to relinquish her seat to a white passenger who had boarded later. She refused to do so and was arrested. She was charged with failure to obey segregation orders, some 40 days before the arrest of [[Rosa Parks]] on similar charges.<ref name="Ladies Before Rosa">{{cite news |last1=Hendrickson |first1=Paul |title=The Ladies Before Rosa |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/04/12/the-ladies-before-rosa/469bf82c-16c0-45c5-9991-812ac6a6005f/ |newspaper=Washington Post |date=April 12, 1998}}</ref> She was arrested and fined $12.<ref name="WBHM">{{cite news |last1=Cleek |first1=Ashley |title=Plaintiff in Landmark Civil Rights Montgomery Bus Case Shares Her Story |url=https://wbhm.org/2015/plaintiff-in-landmark-civil-rights-bus-case-shares-her-story/ |publisher=WBHM NPR Alabama |date=December 10, 2015}}</ref>

Activist [[E. D. Nixon]], leading some of the bus boycott movement, shared information that Smith's father was an alcoholic, and she was not the right symbol to withstand the publicity. The family and neighbors dispute this characterization.<ref name="Ladies Before Rosa" /> Additionally, she was considered not the "right class" to be the rallying point for the movement.<ref name="USNWR">{{cite news |last1=Thornton |first1=Jeannye |title="I'm not going to ride the bus." |publisher=U.S. News & World Report |date=December 11, 1995}}</ref> Smith's father represented her in court, without aid from outside political organizations.<ref name="Black Catholic Messenger" />

Attorney [[Fred Gray (attorney)|Fred Gray]] recruited Smith and her father to become plaintiffs in a federal civil rights class-action lawsuit to end segregated seating on city buses.<ref name="WBHM" />