Rosa Parks, a Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress, simply refused to relinquish her seat on a city bus to a white man on December 1, 1955.   Her act of courage sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and brought the Civil Rights Movement to national attention.   She has been called the mother of the Civil Rights Movement.

In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, segregation laws governed and interfered with many aspects of people's lives.  Among the regulations were laws pertaining to the city bus system: African American people were required to pay their fare to the bus driver in the front, then get off, walk to the rear entrance, and board the bus from there.  African American riders were only allowed to sit in the rows toward the back of the bus, and even then, if White riders ran out of seats in the rows toward the front, the bus driver would require Black passengers to vacate additional rows to accommodate them.  The African American riders would then have to move farther back or stand up.  Black passengers were not allowed to sit across the aisle from Whites in the same row.  Sometimes bus drivers would allow Black passengers to pay their fares, and then spitefully close the doors and drive away before they made it to the back door to board.   About two-thirds of Montgomery's bus riders were African American and subject to these indignities.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley, in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913.  Her father was a carpenter and her mother a teacher.  Her mother advised her daughter and her students to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."  Rosa Parks attended Alabama State Teachers College, married Raymond Parks, and moved to Montgomery with her husband.  The couple was active in the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and helped work on hate crime cases against local African Americans.  The cases, though numerous, did not receive much publicity from the White-controlled press.

Rosa Parks, forty-two years old in 1955, had dealt with the discriminatory practices in the public transit system for some time.  Contrary to popular legend, she was not the first person to challenge the fairness of the regulations; nor did she merely refuse to vacate her seat because she was so tired she did not want to stand up, or because her feet hurt after a long day at work. She has said that on December 1, 1955, she had indeed, worked all day, but was no more tired on that day than any other.  Even though she worked as a seamstress for a department store, (most African Americans had extremely limited opportunities under segregation) Rosa Parks was a college-educated and politically aware woman.  She, and many others, felt that the inherent unfairness of segregation laws needed to be addressed in court.  Eight months earlier, a fifteen year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, had experienced a similar incident on a bus and was arrested for not giving up her seat.  NAACP officials met with Miss Colvin to determine whether she would stand up to media scrutiny if her case was used as a test case against the transit system's segregation policy, but they decided against it.  In October of the same year, another young woman, Mary Smith, was also arrested for the same thing.  NAACP leaders decided not to pursue her case either .

 Yet the incident on December 1, involving Rosa Parks was unplanned; she later stated that she "did not get on the bus to get arrested,” but she "got on the bus to go home." On that day, Mrs. Parks got on the bus and took the last available seat on the bus, toward the back, behind the rows where the White passengers were sitting.  After two or three stops, some more White people boarded the bus, and one of them remained standing, without a seat. When the bus driver saw him standing, he ordered the four African American passengers in Mrs. Parks' row to vacate the row of seats so the White man could occupy one of the seats.  The other three Black passengers stood up, but Rosa Parks did not. When the bus driver questioned her as to whether she was going to stand up, she calmly replied that she was not. The driver then told her that he would have her arrested, and she replied, "You may do that." The driver stopped the bus and called the police, and Mrs. Parks was arrested.

Her bail was posted that Thursday night by a lawyer who was the husband of her former employer. Word of the incident spread rapidly in the African American Community. Rosa Parks, a respected, stable member of that community, and a woman of unimpeachable character, would prove to be perfect for the test case that Black activists had been waiting for.  The next night a meeting was held at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King was the pastor.  The Women's Political Council printed 35,000 handbills urging African Americans to do whatever was   necessary to avoid riding the city buses on Monday, December 5, the day of Mrs. Parks' trial.  The handbills were passed out at schools, and the word spread over the weekend.  Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "If we are wrong, justice is a lie. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water."

On Monday morning, the Black citizens of Montgomery stayed off the buses in mass. People with cars used their vehicles to taxi others who worked too far to walk. When Mrs. Parks arrived at the courthouse on Monday morning, a crowd was waiting in front; she was impeccably dressed in a black dress and gray coat, with white gloves and a hat.  One young onlooker was heard to exclaim, "Oh, she's so sweet! They've messed with the wrong one now!"

Rosa Parks' trial lasted only thirty minutes, and she was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine. The case was appealed, and during the appeal, the boycott of the Montgomery public transit system continued for over a year.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the boycott and his leadership propelled him to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, which had finally begun to receive publicity and national attention since the arrest of Mrs. Parks.  On December 21,1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transit was illegal.  The photograph shown above was taken on that day.

Rosa Parks and her family were threatened and harassed by die-hard segregationists until they moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1957. In 1965, she joined the staff of Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, and worked for him until1988, the year she retired. After her husband Raymond passed away, Rosa Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to benefit children in the Detroit area. She is active in her church, and continues to speak out against racial injustice. In 1999, President Clinton, along with House and Senate leaders, awarded her a Congressional Gold Medal. She is now eighty-eight years old and lives in Detroit. Her name remains recognized throughout the nation as a symbol of courage, dignity, and determination in the struggle against injustice. []

by
Susan Robinson
Republished 4/18/05