The Montgomery County Grand Jury, with authority to recommend stiff fines and jail sentences, is expected to make a report Monday or Tuesday climaxing a week-long investigation of the anti-segregation protest.

Circuit Judge Eugene Carter charged the jury of 17 white men and one Negro last Monday to determine if the 12-week-old boycott against segregated seating on Montgomery City Lines buses is unlawful.

WITHOUT CAUSE

If the jury finds the mass protest was organized and carried on without "just cause or legal excuse," it can return indictments under a state law rarely if ever used before except in labor strife.

The statue was enacted in 1921 as an outgrowth of labor unrest in Birmingham which included boycotts and blacklisting along with physical violence in the strike-ridden coal fields there.

The late Gov. Thomas E. Kilby told the Legislature that the old laws were "inadequate" to deal with conditions which had developed.

Responding to his request, the Legislature wrote the present law which prohibits two or more persons "without just cause or legal excuse" from entering into any combination, conspiracy, agreement or arrangement of understanding for the purpose of hindering, delaying, or preventing any other persons, firms corporations or associations or persons from carrying on any lawful business."

MAXIMUM PENALTY

Maximum penalty for violation is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Officials of the Montgomery City Lines, a subsidiary of National City Lines of Chicago have declined to say publicly how the boycott has affected the company financially. But a 50 per cent increase in bus fares - from 10 to 15 cents - and curtailed operations have offset the loss of business to some extent.

Before the boycott began last Dec 5, approximately 65 per cent of the bus lines' passengers were Negroes. Since then, an - estimated 75 per cent or more of the Negro customers have stopped riding.

Car pools operating with military precision have been organized to get Negroes to and from work. Negro taxicabs have done a thriving business. Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers says many Negroes have complained they are threatened with harm if they rode the buses.

STARTED IN DECEMBER

The mass protest against seating of white and Negro passengers began on the day that Mrs. Rosa Parks, a Negro seamstress, was fined $14 in city court. She was arrested after refusing to move to the Negro section of a bus.

Negro leaders led by a 27-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., demanded a "first come, first serve" arrangement which would seat Negroes from the rear and white passengers from the front until all seats were taken.

Under the present arrangement, the dividing line is determined by the driver. Bus company officials rejected the "first come" proposal.

City officials tried unsuccessfully to find a solution and then, after seven weeks of the boycott, announced they were "through pussyfooting around."

WHO CARES?

The City Commission abandoned all attempts to settle the differences; told the Negroes it didn't care if they never rode the buses again.

In the same announcement, all three members o the Commission disclosed they had joined the pro-segregation Central Alabama Citizens Council which claims more than 12, 000 members in Montgomery and six surrounding counties.

Negro boycott rallies have grown, too, with the meeting places jammed night after night.

Acts of violence have been reported against both the bus company and two Negro leaders, but no one has been injured. Dynamite bombs were exploded at the homes of the Rev. King and E. D. Nixon, former state president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Gunshots were fired at some buses while making their rounds through Negro sections of Montgomery in the first of the protest. Others were targets of rock throwing.

5 FILE SUIT

Meanwhile, five Negroes filed a suit in U. S. District Court attacking as unconstitutional the city and state laws requiring segregation in all public transportation. No hearing has been set.

The suit also asked that city officials be prohibited from "interfering with Negroes, or using force, threats or other intimidation" to compel them to ride the segregated buses.

The Rev. King has called the boycott a part of "something that's happening all over the world" - a revolt against oppression.

"The oppressed peoples of the world are rising up," he told a news conference in Chicago last week.

As the boycott gained force, Police Chief G. J. Ruppenthal announced a rigid enforcement campaign against overcrowding of automobiles - as a safety measure.

KING ARRESTED

Three days before the bomb exploded at his home, the Rev. King was arrested by city policemen on a speeding charge. The officers said he was going 35 miles an hour in a 25-mile zone; King said he wasn't. The judge fined him $14.

Another Negro prominently identified with the boycott, Atty. Fred Gray who filed the anti-segregation sit on behalf of the five Negroes, was exempt from military draft when the boycott began. The 25-year-old lawyer was classified 4D as a "practicing minister."

But his draft board reclassified him 1-A last month without mentioning the racial disturbance. State Selective services Director James W. Jones, who said he ordered Gray's status reviewed, explained the attorney forfeited his right to deferment when his church acquired a fulltime minister.