T. J. Jemison led a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953, which served as a model for the Montgomery bus boycott. Martin Luther King called Jemison three days after the Montgomery protest began, and reported in his memoir that “his painstaking description of the Baton Rouge experience was invaluable” (King, 75). Jemison later recalled the importance of his friend, King, to the movement: “The Christian rearing had given him a burning desire that the whites could not understand. It was sort of like a peace that the world can’t give and the world can’t take away” (Jemison, 12 April 1972).