Rosa Parks:

The Montgomery bus boycott history

“T felt just resigned to give what I could to protest against the way I was being treated.”

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat on a bus to a
white man who wanted it. By this simple
act, which today would seem unremark-
able, she set in motion the civil rights
movement, which led to the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and ultimately ensured that
today all black Americans must be given
equal treatment with whites under the
law.

Parks did not know that she was
making history nor did she intend to do
so. She simply knew that she was tired
after a long day’s work and did not want
to move. Because of her fatigue and
because she was so determined, America
was changed forever. Segregation was on
its way out.

GROWING UP IN A SEGRE-

GATED SOCIETY

In the first half of this century,
Montgomery, Alabama, was totally
segregated, like so many other cities in
the South. In this atmosphere Parks and
her brother grew up. They had been
brought to Montgomery by their
mother, Leona (Edwards) McCauley,
when she and their father separated in
1915. Their father, James McCauley,
went away north and they seldom saw
him, but they were made welcome by
their mother’s family and passed their
childhood among cousins, uncles, aunts,
grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Parks’ mother was a schoolteacher,
and Parks was taught by her until the
age of eleven, when she went to
Montgomery Industrial School for Girls.
It was, of course, an all-black school, as

was Booker T. Washington High School,

- which she attended briefly. Virtually

everything in Montgomery was for
“blacks only” or “whites only,” and Parks
became used to obeying the segregation
laws, though she found them humiliating.

When Parks was twenty, she married
Raymond Parks, a barber, and moved
out of her mother’s home. Parks took in
sewing and worked at various jobs over
the years. She also became an active
member of the National Association for
the Advancement of Coloured People
(NAACP), working as secretary of the
Montgomery chapter.

SILENT PROTESTS

In 1955 Parks was forty-two years old,
and she had taken to protesting
segregation in her own quiet way—for
instance, by walking up the stairs of.a
building rather than riding in an
elevator marked “blacks only.” She was
well respected in the black community

 

for her work with the Montgomery
Voters League as well
as the NAACP. The
Voters League was a
group that helped
black citizens 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
travelling by bus,
preferring to walk
home from work
when she was not
too tired to do so. a
The buses were a :
constant irritation to |
all black passengers. 4
The front four rows i
were reserved for
whites (and re-
mained empty even
when there were not
enough white
passengers to fill
them). The back
section, which was
always very crowded,
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. ;

4
THE ARREST OF ROSA PARKS
This is what happened on the evening

of December |, 1955: Parks took 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, glad to
be off her feet at last, 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 obedi-
ently moved to the back of the bus, but
Parks just didn’t feel like standing for the
rest of the journey, and she quietly
refused to move.

At this, the white bus driver threat-
ened to call the police unless Parks gave
up her seat, but she calmly replied, “Go
ahead and call them.” By the time the
police arrived, the driver was very angry,
and when asked whether he wanted
Parks to be arrested or let off with a
warning, he insisted on arrest. So this
respectable, middle-aged woman was

taken to the police station, where she
was fingerprinted and jailed. She was
allowed to make one phone call. She
called an NAACP lawyer, who arranged
for her to be released on bail.

THE BUS BOYCOTT

Word of Parks’ 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

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History Month

A TRIBUTE TO JENI LEGON, IN PERSON: JENI LEGON
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Dancer and actress Jeni LeGon was a major star of all-black movies—so-called “race films’—in the 1930s and ’40s. Some of
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in Arabian Nights (1942), | Walked with a Zombie (1943), Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade (1948) and I Shot Jesse James (1949).

IN PERSON: SELWYN JACOB IN THE ROAD TAKEN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26TH AT 7:30PM

A nostalgic ride through history, Te Road Taken documents the experiences of Blacks who worked as sleeping-car porters on
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FIELDS OF ENDLEss Days

Fields of Endless Days explores the history of Canadass black population, tracing its struggles and triumphs over a period of
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of working for a pittance; to the wartime participation and activist groups of the first half of the twentieth century.

of Parks’ trial, but Martin Luther King,
Jr. and other 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
laid on.

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 segrega-
tion 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.
The civil rights movement was
underway.
Mother of the civil rights movement

Parks has been hailed as “the mother
of the civil rights movement,” but this
was not an easy role for her. Threats and
constant phone calls she received during
the boycott caused her husband to have

My Father Has A Problem

Do you know how hard it is to breathe
under a Chinese tiger’s philosophy of living?
Somehow, | hear roar but words
Wrath is what he feeds me
His bitterness melts into a fireball
Coming out from the volcanoes of his eyes.
Amazing how a mouth could turn into a beak
Afraid that the beak is gonna poke

   
   
  
   
  
 
 
   
    
 
 
  
  
  
  

a nervous breakdown, and in 1957
moved to Detroit, where Parks’ broth!
Sylvester, lived. There Parks continue
her work as a seamstress, but she had
become a public figure and was often
sought out to give talks about civil
rights.

Over the years, Parks has received
several honorary degrees, and in 1965
Congressman John Conyers of Detroi
appointed her to his staff. Parks’
husband died in 1977 and she retired
1988, but she has continued to work
the betterment of the black communi
She is particularly eager to help the
young, and in 1987 she established th
Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute fo
Self-Development, a training school f
Detroit teenagers.

Each year sees more honours
showered upon her. In 1990, some th
thousand people attended the Kenned
Center in Washington, D.C., to
celebrate the seventy-seventh birthday
the indomitable campaigner and form
seamstress, Rosa Parks.

MUGGED IN HER HOME

On August 30, 1994, the nation—
and especially Detroit—was stunned t
learn that the 81 year old Parks had be
assaulted in her home. Joseph Skipper,
young, unemployed African American
broke into Parks’ home, hit her repeat-
edly, and stole $53 from her. The
incident gained even further news
coverage when Ramiah Mario Jefferso
the man who helped catch Skipper afte
the assault, was himself then arrested f
allegedly driving the getaway car in an
automatic bank teller machine heist
months before. @

FURTHER READING

Celsi, Teresa, Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Millbrook
Press, 1991.

Friese, Kai Jabir, and Eric Velasquez,
Rosa Parks: The Movement Organizes,
Silver Burdett Press, 1990.

Hull, Mary, Rosa Parks: Civil Rights
Leader, Chelsea House, 1994.

Jet, March 5, 1990, pp. 22+; Septem:
ber 19, 1994. pp. 22+.

New York Times, September 1, 1994
p. Al6.

Parks, Rosa, and Jim Haskins, Rosa
Parks: My Story, Dial Books, 1992.

Siegel, Beatrice, The Year They
Walked, Four Winds Press, 1992.

USA Today, August 31, 1994, p. Al.

 

right into and through me.
Afraid that any word I come up with
will trigger his claws to slash my flesh.
Yet, anticipating his limit of tolerating
another philosophy.
This Chinese tiger seems modest and well-bred
But it’s his cunning camouflage

He might just have rabies.

Anonymous

 

4 January 28 1998 The Other Press