Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat to a White Person– Inspires Historic Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks on this day refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her act launched the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which members of the African-American community refused to ride on the city’s buses.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott became one of the iconic events of the civil rights movement. Parks was seated in the “colored” section of the bus, but the white section was filled and, in accordance with the law, she was required to give up her seat if a white person asked for it. Parks was convicted on December 5, 1955, and that day also marked the beginning of the bus boycott.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott inspired a generation of Americans, black and white, but in fact the Montgomery buses were ordered integrated by a federal lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, that began on March 2, 1955, nine months before Rose Parks acted, and which was finally settled by the Supreme Court on December 17, 1956.
Roas Parks’ brave action on this day and the resulting Montgomery bus boycott were not the only African-American boycott of a segregated bus system in the deep south in the 1950s. More than two years before, in June 1953 Martha White, an African-American housekeeper in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, got on the bus to go home and found only one vacant seat, in the “Whiles Only” section. Tired after a day’s work, she sat down in that seat in violation of the law. The bus driver called the police. An African-American minister intervened and Ms. White was thrown off the bus and not arrested.Word spread throughout the African-American community and a meeting was held and a decision was made to boycott the city bus system and organize a ride-sharing program to transport African-Americans. The boycott began on June 18th, 1953 and lasted eight days. Because of the loss of bus revenues, city officials agreed to a compromise, with a few seats in front only for whites, a bench in the back for African-Americans, and all the seats in between open to everyone. Two years later, the Baton Rouge boycott was overshadowed by the Montgomery boycott. (See the book on the Baton Rouge boycott below.)
Contrary to popular mythology, Rosa Parks had been very active in civic affairs prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and she continued to be after the boycott ended. But because of hostility to her in Montgomery because of her leadership on the bus issue, she decided to leave and moved to Detroit where other family members lived. She became a staff member for Congressman John Conyers and played an important role in handling community issues in his Detroit district. She often said that she found as much race discrimination in Detroit as she had in Montgomery, Alabama, although it was a different kind than in the south.
In 2016 the Library of Congress placed digital copies of the entire collection of the Rosa Parks Papers on its web site, making it readily available for browsing, learning, and research (see the link below). The collection consists of 7,500 manuscript items and 2,500 photographs and prints. The collection is owned by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, who has loaned it to the Library of Congress for 10 years. (Howard Buffett is the son of the billionaire investor Warren Buffett.)
A Must Read biography: Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013)
Visit the Rosa Parks collection at the Library of Congress.
Read Rosa Parks’ 1956 description of the boycott: http://www.crmvet.org/disc/parks_mbb.pdf
Read her story: Rosa Parks, with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992)
Read: Robin White Clark, The Baton Rouge Bus Boycott (2020)
Watch a 1983 interview with Rosa Parks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3h6s9jxZtE
Read: Stewart Burns, Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1997)
Visit the Rosa Parks Library and Museum, Troy University, Montgomery, AL: http://visitingmontgomery.com/play/rosa-parks-library-museum-childrens-wing
Learn more; Rosa Parks’ arrest records, and more: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here