It was a Thursday evening in December 1955, unseasonably warm even for Alabama, and 42-year-old Rosa Lee Parks was on her way home from the department store where she was a seamstress. She sat quietly in a seat in the front row of the black section of the bus. She was worrying, as she recalls, about secretarial kinds of things.
The bus swayed along darkening city streets while Parks planned the tasks she had to do as a volunteer for the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. There was a conference coming up. She had dozens of notices to mail.Parks paid little heed to how full the bus was getting. She had no idea that her life was about to change - no idea that she was about to give life to a national civil-rights movement.
In 1955 in the United States, the Supreme Court had recently declared segregated education unconstitutional. And in Alabama, the NAACP's drive to register voters - a drive that had been going on for more than a decade - faltered forth.
"That's how it was in those days. Most blacks were afraid. Those that were in good favor with white folks didn't want to lose their privileges by registering to vote," recalls Parks in her new autobiography, "Rosa Parks: My Story.' " Still, Parks and her husband, Raymond, kept urging people to register.
With the help of writer Jim Haskins, Parks tells her story so simply a 12-year-old could understand it. In fact, she wrote the book, her friends say, just for that reason: to tell youngsters about the life of blacks in America a generation ago.
In her town, as in the rest of the country, there were individual activists, but they didn't organize in protest - not until the bus boycott.
Parks understood the sentiment of the times. Because she'd worked for the NAACP she knew the leaders wanted a way to challenge the segregation ordinances governing public transportation. Blacks made up 70 percent of the bus company's business.Their complaint was not necessarily about sitting in the back, but of having to give up their seats when the white section got full.
Parks says she never thought about becoming a legal test case that December night. Nor did she dream 30,000 people would follow her into a yearlong boycott, a boycott that thrust the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. onto the national scene, and launched the civil right's movement into the age of protest.
That first evening, Rosa Parks was all alone.
Every seat was taken in the white section of the bus when another white, a man, got on and stood waiting for the driver, James Blake, to clear a seat for him.
Since blacks weren't supposed to sit next to whites, Blake tried to clear an entire row. Two women and one man stood up and moved when he told them to.
But Rosa Parks stayed still. She refused to move, she says, not because she was tired, but because she was tired of giving way.
"The driver asked was I going to stand up. I said, `No.' He said, `Then I'm going to have you arrested.' I said, `You may do that.' Those were the only words we spoke to each other."
Her restrained description of this important event is a metaphor for her entire life. Rosa Parks is a dignified and restrained woman.
Born Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala., to a carpenter and a schoolteacher, Parks was raised for most of her life by her mother and maternal grandparents. Her father sought work out of state, and the family didn't see him for years at a time.
Her grandfather's father was a white plantation owner and his mother was a slave of mixed blood. After his father/owner died, the little boy who looked so light was singled out for special beatings by the white overseer. Parks' grandfather grew up hating white people.
Her mother and her grandmother taught her self-respect. But they often cautioned the outspoken little girl about speaking too freely to whites. Her grandfather and later her husband, Raymond Parks, were the first black men she knew who were actually unafraid, who armed themselves if they thought a confrontation was coming.
She avoided hate, but grew up with a strong feelings about fairness. Reading her autobiography, one senses Rosa Parks spent a lifetime holding strong - even holding back - answering all the questions she's ever been asked, but not elaborating, guarding her privacy and her heart.
She never had any children. Her mother and her husband protected her during the first part of her life. She seemed more and more protective of them as years went by.
During the boycott, Parks dreaded having her mother answer the phone to hear what the cruel callers had to say.
Only once does she talk about giving way under the stress. The boycott was in full swing, she'd been traveling for several weeks, and didn't sleep well when she was worried about her husband and mother back home. In San Francisco at the NAACP convention, being questioned too closely by a white reporter, she began to cry hysterically.
After the boycott ended, the Parks' took her mother and moved to Detroit. Rosa Parks continued to be sought for appearances. As the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement," she felt obliged to travel and to speak.
Still, she says, history thrust her into a position she didn't seek. "I understand that I am a symbol," she writes. "But I have never gotten used to being a public person."
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(Additional information)
Tense year changed racial relations forever
- In 1955, Montgomery, Ala., has 50,000 blacks and 100,000 whites. Segregation is a way of life. Blacks use separate elevators and drinking fountains and sit at the back of the bus.
- On Thursday, Dec. 1, when Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat in the black section to a white man, she is arrested.
- E.D. Nixon, president of the Pullman Car Porters of Montgomery, and an influential white couple, attorney and Mrs. Clifford Durr, post the $100 bail. Nixon calls Fred Gray, one of two black attorneys in town, to represent Parks.
- The next night black ministers call a meeting. The crowd is moved by the words of a young newcomer to their community, 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King. Blacks decide to boycott the buses on Monday, when Parks is arraigned.
- Monday, Dec. 5, Parks is found guilty and fined $14. She appeals.
Of the 30,000 to 40,000 blacks who regularly take the bus, only several hundred ride. Since blacks make up 70 percent of the ridership, their absence is noticed.
- That night, 4,000 blacks meet at the Holt Street Baptist Church. A spontaneous collection forces the hasty organization of an association to receive the funds. The Rev. King is elected president of the association. He asks the crowd to keep the non-violent protest going.
- Dec. 8. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the Rev. King and Gray meet with bus company and city commissioners. They ask for three things: courteous treatment on buses; first-come, first-served seating, with whites filling the bus from the front back and blacks from the back forward; black drivers on bus routes through black neighborhoods. Requests are denied.
- The rest of the nation is slow to sense the significance of the Alabama boycott. For the first 10 weeks, the New York Times runs
the story deep inside.
Meanwhile, blacks walk to work or form paying carpools and are fined for not having taxi permits.
- In January, Parks is laid off from the department store where she is a seamstress. Her husband's job as a barber on a military base becomes too stressful and he quits. Parks spends her days as a dispatcher for the ad hoc transportation system. Using 300 private cars, blacks move 30,000 people to and from work and school every day.
- In early February, Fred Gray files suit in U.S. district court saying segregated buses are unconstitutional. Threats and crank phone calls are a daily part of life for the Parks family.
- In late February, a grand jury indicts 89 of those organizing the boycott. King and Parks are among those arrested. On the front page of the New York Times, Parks is shown being fingerprinted. She is invited to speak around the country.
- In June, a three-judge court votes two to one in favor of the desegregation suit. The city appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Business is bad; the bus lines lay off half their 70 drivers.
- On Nov. 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses. Black leaders extend the boycott until the court order gets to Montgomery.
- Dec. 17, the city recognizes the court's decision.
- On Dec. 20, 1956, blacks end their 381-day boycott. Rosa Parks is at home caring for her elderly mother when three Look magazine reporters come to her home and ask her to go downtown with them and get on and off a bus so they can take photos. She does. One of the white reporters poses with her. She takes the seat in front of his.
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(Schedule)
Human Rights Day
Rosa Parks will be in Utah for Human Rights Day. On Monday, Jan. 20, she'll be at little America Hotel in Salt Lake City for an NAACp lucheon and to sign copies of her new autobiography. Other apperances are being planned. For details call the NAACP at 363-5771.