Okla-homey
12/1/2006, 08:11 AM
Dec. 1, 1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott Incited
Exactly fifty-one years ago today, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is cited and jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in violation of the city's racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott organized by Rev. Martin L. King, the young pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6622/rosaparks41gk.jpg
Parks' booking photo
"The mother of the civil rights movement," as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. Tuskegee is just about 40 miles from Montgomery in southwest Alabama. She worked as a seamstress (an alterations lady in various Montgomery clothing retailers) and in 1944 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Per Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, blacks were required to sit to the rear of the last row of white seating on public buses and were also obligated to give up even those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up.
Now here's the thing. Many people think Parks deliberately sat down in the forward "white" section of the bus. She did not. It doesn't really matter because her act was just as illegal as if she had sat down in the white section, but I think its important to know what really happened that day...so here's the dealio.
The facts are that Parks, then aged 42, was seated in the first row of the black section when the driver of the bus demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks therefore broke the law when she refused to give up her seat in the black section to the white man. Parks' refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her "tired feet," as is the popular legend.
In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery's racist bus laws for several months, and Parks acting within her official capacity as recording secretary of the local NAACP chapter had been privy to this discussion. Three days after the incident, she was found guilty and ordered to pay a $10 fine, plus an additional $4 in court costs.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3927/rosabr0118p1s2if.jpg
Learning of Parks' arrest, the NAACP and other activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers and word-of-mouth, and the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed by the activists to organize the protest. That organization exists to this day, but it doesn't really do anything of substance anymore...at least is didn't when I lived in Montgomery, until fairly recently.
The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Martin L. King, told a large crowd gathered at the largest black church in town, "The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home in Montgomery was dynamited, but he and his family escaped harm.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9223/rosadexave27tz.jpg
King at a news conference during the boycott
The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As black folks previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott.
Interestingly, and this has been a source of pride among USAF folks stationed at Montgomery for fifty years, the Maxwell AFB Officers Wives Club organized to help support the bus boycott by running carpools to provide rides to black women to their places of employment and then back home again at night allowing hundreds of black women to continue to support their families while preserving the boycott.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6787/rosaparksobv5in.jpg
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7076/rosaparksrev8wy.jpg
Parks was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999
On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
On December 20 1956, Montgomery's buses were desegregated and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was called off after 381 days. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8356/rosaparksmarker0ra.jpg
Of course, since she was branded a "troublemaker" by white Montgomerians, she lost her sewing job, and no retailer in town would hire her, so she, her husband and mother did what so many Southern blacks had done over the years since the Great Depression, they headed up to Detroit where Parks remained for the rest of her life
Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/8049/rosadexter11gg.jpg
Kings pastorate, Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is literally across the street from the Alabama state capitol and within 200 yards of the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn as the president of the Confederate States
Incidentally, there is a 1991 movie starring Sissy Spacek, Whoopi Goldberg and Vingh Rhames called "The Long Walk Home" filmed on location in Montgomery with the full cooperation of local folks that does a super job of capturing the spirit and history of the period. Its a very watchable film too. I encourage you to rent or buy the DVD if you'd like to travel back to the era and better understand what the big deal was about folks refusing to ride city busses in protest of segregation.
link:
http://rottentomatoes.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=103174404/
Rosa Parks died in Detroit on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. She was the first black woman ever so honored.
I said it then, I'll say it again, she was a lady, she was courageous, and while she was healthy, she always refused the advances of race hustlerswho sought her public support or to somehow capitalize off of her legacy.
"To this day I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom." -- Rosa Parks
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/1715/insane7zo4nh.jpg
Exactly fifty-one years ago today, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is cited and jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in violation of the city's racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott organized by Rev. Martin L. King, the young pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6622/rosaparks41gk.jpg
Parks' booking photo
"The mother of the civil rights movement," as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. Tuskegee is just about 40 miles from Montgomery in southwest Alabama. She worked as a seamstress (an alterations lady in various Montgomery clothing retailers) and in 1944 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Per Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, blacks were required to sit to the rear of the last row of white seating on public buses and were also obligated to give up even those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up.
Now here's the thing. Many people think Parks deliberately sat down in the forward "white" section of the bus. She did not. It doesn't really matter because her act was just as illegal as if she had sat down in the white section, but I think its important to know what really happened that day...so here's the dealio.
The facts are that Parks, then aged 42, was seated in the first row of the black section when the driver of the bus demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks therefore broke the law when she refused to give up her seat in the black section to the white man. Parks' refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her "tired feet," as is the popular legend.
In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery's racist bus laws for several months, and Parks acting within her official capacity as recording secretary of the local NAACP chapter had been privy to this discussion. Three days after the incident, she was found guilty and ordered to pay a $10 fine, plus an additional $4 in court costs.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3927/rosabr0118p1s2if.jpg
Learning of Parks' arrest, the NAACP and other activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers and word-of-mouth, and the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed by the activists to organize the protest. That organization exists to this day, but it doesn't really do anything of substance anymore...at least is didn't when I lived in Montgomery, until fairly recently.
The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Martin L. King, told a large crowd gathered at the largest black church in town, "The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home in Montgomery was dynamited, but he and his family escaped harm.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9223/rosadexave27tz.jpg
King at a news conference during the boycott
The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As black folks previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott.
Interestingly, and this has been a source of pride among USAF folks stationed at Montgomery for fifty years, the Maxwell AFB Officers Wives Club organized to help support the bus boycott by running carpools to provide rides to black women to their places of employment and then back home again at night allowing hundreds of black women to continue to support their families while preserving the boycott.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6787/rosaparksobv5in.jpg
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7076/rosaparksrev8wy.jpg
Parks was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999
On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
On December 20 1956, Montgomery's buses were desegregated and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was called off after 381 days. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8356/rosaparksmarker0ra.jpg
Of course, since she was branded a "troublemaker" by white Montgomerians, she lost her sewing job, and no retailer in town would hire her, so she, her husband and mother did what so many Southern blacks had done over the years since the Great Depression, they headed up to Detroit where Parks remained for the rest of her life
Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory.
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/8049/rosadexter11gg.jpg
Kings pastorate, Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is literally across the street from the Alabama state capitol and within 200 yards of the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn as the president of the Confederate States
Incidentally, there is a 1991 movie starring Sissy Spacek, Whoopi Goldberg and Vingh Rhames called "The Long Walk Home" filmed on location in Montgomery with the full cooperation of local folks that does a super job of capturing the spirit and history of the period. Its a very watchable film too. I encourage you to rent or buy the DVD if you'd like to travel back to the era and better understand what the big deal was about folks refusing to ride city busses in protest of segregation.
link:
http://rottentomatoes.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=103174404/
Rosa Parks died in Detroit on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. She was the first black woman ever so honored.
I said it then, I'll say it again, she was a lady, she was courageous, and while she was healthy, she always refused the advances of race hustlerswho sought her public support or to somehow capitalize off of her legacy.
"To this day I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom." -- Rosa Parks
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/1715/insane7zo4nh.jpg