Rosa Parks
and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Depiction of Rosa Parks
| In the first half of this century like many other southern cities Montgomery, Alabama, was heavily segregated. It was in this atmosphere that Rosa Parks and her brother grew up. Parks's mother was a schoolteacher, and Parks was taught by her until the age of eleven, when she went to Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. The young Parks became used to obeying the many segregation laws though she no doubt found them humiliating. At the age of twenty, she married Raymond Parks, a barber, took up sewing as well as other various jobs over the years. She also became an active member of the NAACP working as secretary of the Montgomery chapter.
|
|
In 1955 a forty-two year old Parks had taken to protesting segregation in her own quiet way. For instance, rather than ride an elevator designated for "blacks only," she would routinely take the stairs. Such actions gained her a level of respect in the black community. Parks also worked with the Montgomery Voters League as well as the NAACP. The Voters League was a group designed to help blacks pass the various tests that had been set up to make it difficult for them to register as voters. As well as avoiding black-only elevators, Parks often avoided traveling by bus, preferring to walk home from work when she was not too tired to do so. The buses were a constant reminder of segregation to all black passengers. The front four rows were reserved for whites and remained empty even when there were not enough white passengers to fill them. The back section was for black passengers. In between were some rows that were really part of the black section, but served as an overflow area for white passengers. If the white section was full, black passengers in the middle section had to vacate their seats--a whole row had to be vacated, even if only one white passenger required a seat. |
| On that fateful day of December l, 1955: Parks decided to take the bus because she was feeling particularly tired after a long day in the department store where she worked as a seamstress. She was sitting in the middle section, resting her feet after a long day's work when a white man boarded the bus and demanded that her row be cleared because the white section was full. The others in the row obediently moved to the back of the bus, but Parks quietly refused to move. She would later tell others that she just did not feel like moving. Angry at her rebellion the white bus driver threatened to call the police unless Parks gave her up her seat. A calm Parks only replied, "Go ahead and call them." By the time the police arrived the now enraged bus driver insisted on arrest. Parks was subsequently arrested, fingerprinted and jailed. With her one allowed phone call, she contacted an NAACP lawyer who arranged for her to be released on bail. |
|
Word of Parks's arrest spread quickly, and the Women's Political Council decided to protest her
treatment by organizing a boycott of the buses. The boycott was set for December 5, the day of Parks's
trial, but some prominent members of Montgomery's black community realized that here was a chance to take a firm stand on segregation. As a result, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to organize a boycott that would continue until the bus segregation laws were changed. Leaflets were distributed telling people not to ride the buses, and other forms of transport were relied upon. One of the key activists in this struggle would be a young and upcoming member of the black community, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott lasted 382 days, causing the bus company to lose a vast amount of money. Meanwhile, Parks was fined for failing to obey a city ordinance, but on the advice of her lawyers she refused to pay the fine so that they could challenge the segregation law in court. The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Montgomery segregation law illegal, and the boycott was at last called off. Yet Parks had started far more than a bus boycott. Other cities followed Montgomery's example and were protesting their segregation laws. For this she has been hailed as, "The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." (Photo and Information courtesy of Rosa Parks: Civil Rights Leader by Mary Hull and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Teresa Celsi) |
