USA TODAY International Edition
One woman’s courage changed the nation
‘ I had no idea it would turn into this,’ Parks says
On Dec. 1, 1955, a 42- yearold seamstress at a department store boarded a bus in Montgomery, Ala., and took a seat in the 1 rst row of the “ colored” section.
A city ordinance required blacks to give up their seats when whites needed them. When several white passengers boarded that day, black riders gave them their seats. Rosa Parks refused.
The bus driver had her arrested, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was ready to 1 ght a law it had been looking to challenge for some time.
“ At the time I was arrested, I had no idea it would turn into this,” Parks said 30 years later. “ It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it signi 1 cant was that the masses of the people joined in.”
Parks died Monday at 92.
Parks, who was a member of the NAACP, was not the 1 rst to refuse to give up her seat. Two black Montgomerywomen had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge and paid 1 nes. But Parks was jailed and was the 1 rst to challenge the law in courtwith the backing of the NAACP.
On the day she went to court Sept. 14, 1996: President Clinton honors Rosa Parks during a dinner in Washington, D. C. the following Monday, virtually the entire black ridership of the Montgomery bus system refused to ride in protest.
Parks was convicted and 1 ned, but a new tactic was born. Thousands of blacks walked to work and school or took black-owned taxis. Buses ran their routes with few passengers, given that blacks made up more than two- thirds of the bus system’s riders.
Religious and political leaders, some of whom were white, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to keep the boycott going. March 19, 1956: Rosa Parks arrives for bus boycott trial in Montgomery, Ala. She is escorted by E. D. Nixon of the Alabama NAACP.
Asked to lead the boycott was Martin Luther King Jr., the 26- year-old, newly appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
“ If we are wrong, justice is a lie,” he said in a speech at the time. “ And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and 1 ght until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
For 381 days, 42,000 blacks refused to ride public transportation in the city. Montgomery County tried to shut down the boycott with laws against carpooling, and by raising cab rates. King’s home bombed, injuring no one.
But the boycott held, and the U.S. Supreme Court not only overturned Parks’ 1 ne but ordered an end to the segregation in the Montgomery bus system.
On Dec. 21, 1956, King and other civil rights leaders were the 1 rst to board a city bus as equals with whites.
“We thought the boycott would last four days,” said Ralph Abernathy, a pastor and boycott organizer. “We only wanted improved segregation. The people wanted it all.”
Rosa Louise McCauley was was born on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Her father was a carpenter, her mother a teacher. Her grandparents, with whom she would live as a girl, had been slaves.
At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by women from the northern United States.
“ Back then, we didn’t have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival,” she said.
She credited her parents and grandparents with instilling in her a sense of human equality. She was educated at Alabama State College and became a seamstress.
In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, a barber. They shared a commitment to voting rights for blacks and joined the NAACP, for which she had worked as a secretary.
“ I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP,” Parks recalled.
“ We didn’t seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did notwish to continue being second-class citizens.”
Parks and her husband moved to Detroit in 1957 and she worked as an aide to U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. Raymond Parks died in 1977. The couple had no children.
In 1999, at age 86, Parks was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest civilian award. uParks