Rosa Parks Convicted for Refusing to Give Up Her Seat; Bus Boycott Begins
Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955. On this day, she was convicted of violating Alabama’s racial segregation law. The day also marked the beginning of a boycott of the Montgomery buses by the African-American community.
The Montgomery Bus boycott became one of the iconic events of the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott lasted for 12 months. In fact, however, the Montgomery buses were desegregated by a court order in Browder v. Gayle, in a case that began on March 2, 1955, several months before the bus boycott began and was finally settled by the Supreme Court on December 17, 1956. The Court ordered Alabama to desegregate the buses three days later.
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 s the son of the famous investor Warren Buffett.)
Read the detailed and fascinating biography: Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (2013)
Visit the Rosa Parks collection at the Library of Congress here
Read Rosa Parks’ fascinating 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)
Watch a 1983 interview with Rosa Parks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3h6s9jxZtE
Visit the Rosa Parks Library and Museum, Troy University, Montgomery, AL: http://visitingmontgomery.com/play/rosa-parks-library-museum-childrens-wing
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here