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Talking
Points
Rosa Parks &t
Montgomery Bus Boyc
Viv Sanders puts an inspiring figure, and an important event, into historical perspective.
Death of an Icon
The recent death of 92-year-old Rosa
Parks reminded people throughout
the world of the great civil rights
movement
of
mid-20th-century
Amenca, In the years after her refusal
to give up her seat for a white man
triggered off the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, she became an icon. In that
process, however, some essential
truths about the significance of Rosa
Parks and the Montgomery Bus
Boycott were lost.
There are several controversies
relating to Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott,
Firstly, some books written for
younger children suggest that she was
a tired old lady who, after a hard day's
work, just could not take having to
give up her seat. Such books suggest
that her refusal to give up her seat was
a spontaneous action.
Secondly, many historians' studies
suggest that the Montgomery Bus
Boycott was the first time that a black
community had mobilised to oppose
segregation. Some see the boycott as
the start of the civil rights movement.
Thirdly, many writers and readers
either give or have the impression that
Rosa Parks was the only, or at least the
most important, female figure in the
black struggle for civil rights.
This article takes issue with these
three contentions.
A Spontaneous Action?
Rosa Parks lived in Montgomery, the
state capital of Alabama, Throughout
the Southern states, local laws
enforced segregation in public places,
including buses. On 1 December
1955, as on every other workday,
Parks boarded the bus that would take
her home from work in the
Rosa Park5 posing for a police photograph after her refusal to give up a
seat to a white passenger on 1 December 1955.
Montgomery Fair department store.
That bus was particularly full. As
always. Parks paid her fare to the
white bus driver, and then walked to
the back of the bus to get up into the
black section. The first vacant seat was
at the front of the black section,
halfway down the bus. Parks sat
down, alongside three other black
passengers.
After the bus reached the next
stop, white passengers took all the
History Review September 2006 3
The bus driver asked Parks and the other blacks in the row to get
out of their seats so that the white man would be able to sit
down and not have to sit alongside black people.
for thu CHy
A TRANSCRIPT
Of-nie
BECORD AND PROCEEDniGS
Before The
RECORDER'S COURT
In the Case of
City of MontgonMiy
Rosa's family belonged to another
politically active organisation, the
African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In
1900, Montgomery's
black
ministers
had
urged
their
congregations
to
boycott
Montgomery's electnc trolley system
in protest against segregation. The
boycott was a success, until the
streetcars were re-segregated as a
result of the re-emergence of the Ku
Klux Klan in the 1920s. 'I had heard
stories about the 1900 boycott,' Parks
remembered, and 'I thought about it
sometimes when the segregated
trolley passed by. It saddened me to
think how we had taken one foot
forward and two steps back,'
K/wz^
Appeat«l to the Circuit Court of
Montfcoincry
AJcx^
/
The official police record card of Rosa Parks.
seats in all the rows in front of Parks.
One white man remained standing.
The bus driver asked Parks and the
other blacks in the row to get out of
their seats so that the white man
would be able to sit down and not
have to sit alongside black people.
While the other three black
passengers obediently gave up their
seats, Parks refused. The bus driver
stopped the bus, called for the police,
and Parks was arrested.
Parks was not a tired, little old lady
- she was only 42 years old. Nor did
her act of defiance come out of the
blue. Rosa Parks came from a family
that had a long tradition of civil rights
activism. She was a committed and
trained activist who, prior to her
4 Histoiy Review Septonber 2006
of being white-looking. He was always
doing or saying something that would
embarrass or agitate white people.'
He had been a keen supporter of
Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro
Improvement Association, the first
mass movement in black American
history. Garvey had urged supporters
to take pride in being black. Rosa
believed that blacks were 'direct
descendants of the greatest and
proudest race who ever peopled the
earth'.
arrest, had frequently discussed with
other Montgomery activists the
desirability of a suitable black
passenger getting arrested for defying
bus segregation laws. The activists
anticipated that such an arrest would
iead to inevitable punishment and
then trigger a bus boycott by
Montgomery's black community.
The Making of an Activist
Born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama,
of mixed race descent, pale-skinned
Rosa considered herself black. She
recalled that her grandfather, who
had been born into slavery, 'was very
light-comptexioned, with straight hair,
and sometimes people took him for
white. He took every bit of advantage
From an early age Rosa was aware,
and resentful, of racial inequality and
hostility. She recalled that, as a child,
'We talked about how just in case the
Klansmen broke into our house, we
should go to bed with our clothes on
so we would be ready to run if we had
to,'
From 1931, 18 year-old Rosa lived
in Montgomery with her light-skinned
husband Raymond Parks. The National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) was the
oldest and most prestigious black
organisation. Raymond helped found
Montgomery's branch and sold papers
such as NAACP's Crisis in his
barbershop. As an NAACP activist,
Raymond helped raise funds for the
lawyers who kept the Scottsboro
youths (who had been unfairly
accused of raping white women) out
of the electric chair.
In 1941 Rosa Parks got a job at
'How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?'
Maxwell Field, a US military base. One
of her heroes. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, had ordered the integration
of the base. This gave Rosa new
insight: 'You might just say Maxwell
opened my eyes up. It was an
alternative reality to the ugly racial
policies of Jim Crow. I could ride on an
integrated trolley on the base, but
when I left the base, I had to ride
home on a segregated bus.'
In 1942, Rosa Parks joined NAACP
•From the start the NAACP, to me at
least, was about empowerment
through the ballot box. With a vote
would
come
economic
improvements.'
Southern
blacks
suffered political as well as social
discrimination. During World War II,
only a few Southern blacks were able
to vote. Rosa resented her brother
Sylvester being drafted to fight for a
'democracy' in which he could not
vote. White registrars made it difficult
for blacks to vote by asking difficult
questions on state constitutions or
impossible questions such as 'How
many bubbles are there in a bar of
soap?' One black college graduate
responded to the latter question with,
'I'm afraid I don't know, sir, but as I
don't want to remain ignorant for the
rest of my life, I would be very grateful
if you told me the answer'.
was one of the many early examples
of the use or threat of non-violent
protest in order to improve the black
situation.
Montgomery bus driver James
Blake, who liked to call black women
'bitch' and 'coon', clashed with Rosa
Parks when she tried to board his bus
at the front in 1943. Blake ordered her
off. She obeyed and vowed never to
board 'Blake's bus' again. In that same
Rosa soon became Montgomery
NAACP secretary. She worked closely
with local NAACP leader, railroad
porter E.D. Nixon, whose father was a
Baptist minister. Nixon was not easy to
work with. He repeatedly said,
'Women don't need to be nowhere
but in the kitchen'. Parks would
respond, 'What about me?', and
Nixon would say, 'I need a secretary,
and you're a good one.' Nixon had
been inspired by black trade unionist
A. Philip Randolph. Randolph had
established the first black trade union,
the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters, and in 1941 had threatened
President Franklin Roosevelt with a
black March on Washington unless he
did
something
to
equalise
black employment opportunities.
Randolph's tactic had worked. This
year. Parks tried to register to vote.
Would-be black voters were asked to
pass a literacy test, which Parks 'failed'
in 1943. Another obstacle to black
voting was the poll tax. Payment of
the $16.50 poll tax before she couid
vote was expensive for Parks, who did
not earn much as a part-time
seamstress. However, in 1945 she
finally managed to register and voted
for 'Big Jim' Folsom for governor.
Amazingly, despite denouncing the Ku
Klux Klan and racial and sexual
inequality, he won the election.
against the racist Nazi ideology, then
returned home to find white American
racism unchanged, many lost hope
and respect for white Americans. Spat
upon by whites, called 'uppity' by the
police and unable to find a job in
Montgomery, Sylvester moved to
Detroit. There, despite frequent
'White workers preferred' notices, his
sister noted, 'you couid find a seat
anywhere on a bus' and 'get better
The badly mutilated corpse of Emmett Till at his funeral. This
photograph profoundly affected Parks.
Meanwhile,
Parks'
brother
Sylvester had returned from serving
his country in World War II. The war
was a turning point in African
American history, according to black
writer James Baldwin. Baldwin said
that when black Americans fought
accommodation'. However, the 1943
Detroit race riots, in which 34 blacks
were killed, made her realise that
'racism was almost as widespread in
Detroit as in Montgomery'. She
dropped the idea of moving North: it
was not the 'promised land'.
The NAACP's top female worker,
Ella Baker, was Parks' greatest
inspiration at an NAACP leadershiptraining seminar in Florida (1946),
Parks was rising rapidly within the
NAACP ranks. In 1947 she was made
secretary of NAACP for the whole of
Alabama, In 1949 she became adviser
to the NAACP Youth Group in
Montgomery.
She
and
Nixon
encouraged students to enter the
segregated public library and ask
repeatedly (if unsuccessfully) for
books. 'Every day in the early 1950s
Histoiy Review Sepiember 2006 5
'Every day in the early 1950s we were looking
for ways to challenge Jim Crow laws.'
we were looking for ways to challenge
Jim Crow laws.' She was particularly
excited by the black community's bus
boycott in Baton Rouge in Louisiana in
1953, but disappointed when the
Baptist Church called it
off.
Sometimes Christian churches were
reluctant to challenge racial inequality,
talked about the Supreme Court's
BROWN
1954
ruling
against
segregated
education.
Parks
subsequently noted the inspirational
effect of that ruling: 'You can't
imagine the rejoicing among black
people, and some white people. It was
a very hopeful time'. Significantly, four
to persuade Montgomery ministers to
support a bus boycott. Nixon and the
WPC talked
incessantly
about
organising a bus boycott in 1954 and
1955.
As inspirational as BROWN, but in
a very different way, was the August
1955murderof EmmettTill.Till, a 14-
A bus in Texas in 1956, with black Americans confined to the back rows of seats.
although some preachers would take
the lead in the civil rights movement.
Parks recalled that she was inspired by
sermons on civil nghts preached in her
church.
\n August 1955, Parks was one of
only 30 people (mostly women) who
turned up to hear exciting new
Montgomery preacher Martin Luther
King address an NAACP meeting. King
6 History Review Septemlwr 2006
days after the BROWN decision, Jo
Ann Robinson, an English professor at
Alabama State University, wrote to
Montgomery's mayor, threatening a
bus boycott unless blacks received
better treatment on Montgomery's
buses. Robinson led a university
lecturers' group, the Women's Political
Council (WPC), set up at the end of
World War II. The WPC had long tried
year-old from Chicago, had visited his
cousins in Mississippi. The family of a
white woman took offence at some
comments made by Till, and Till's
mangled, unrecognisable corpse was
later found in the river. Rosa Parks
cried when she saw a photograph of
Till in his open coffin. When an allwhite jury found those accused of his
murder not guilty, Rosa grew more
determined to make some kind of a
stand. After she met Harlem
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell
she was even more inspired, Powell
stayed with E,D, Nixon when he came
to Alabama to encourage the black
population of the town of Selma to
boycott the local dairy for having fired
a black petitioner for school
desegregation.
During 1954-55, Parks worked for
white couple Clifford and Virginia
Durr, Virginia Durr introduced Parks to
Highlander Folk School, which had
been established in Tennessee in 1932
as a centre for the study of worker and
black rights. Leading civil nghts
activists such as Martin Luther King
attended training courses there. Parks
found Highlander inspirational. The
Durrs were well acquainted with the
WPC at Alabama State University and
joined the lecturers, Parks and Nixon
in discussing a possible Montgomery
bus boycott. They were especially
encouraged when a South Carolina
federal court ruled that intrastate
segregated
bus
seating
was
unconstitutional.
As part of her NAACP work with
young people, Rosa Parks was the
mentor of 15 year-old NAACP youth
member Claudette Colvin, Colvin was
a feisty character who wrote a school
essay denouncing the law that
prohibited blacks from trying on
clothes in white department stores as
they would 'smell or grease up the
merchandise'. In March 1955 Colvin
refused to give up her bus seat to a
white woman, and as a result was
taken to court for defiance of
Montgomery's bus segregation laws.
NAACP nearly made Colvin a test case
against bus segregation until Nixon
found out that she was several
months pregnant. As Rosa said, the
white press would have depicted the
pregnant teenager as 'a bad girl'.
Racial tension over bus seating had
increased dramatically in Montgomery
during 1955. One man had been shot
to death for disobeying bus drivers. In
October, an 18-year-old Montgomery
teenager was jailed for not giving up
her seat (behind the 'for colored' sign)
to a white lady. Rosa Parks too was
behind the movable 'colored' sign on
December 1st 1955.
The search for a test case
The actions and treatment of Rosa
Parks on 1st December 1955 came at
a time when she, Nixon and Jo Ann
Robinson and the WPC were waiting
for a bus segregation test case. They
dreamed of a bus boycott in support
of someone taken to court for defying
the bus segregation laws. They
guessed they would get plenty of
support from Montgomery women.
Hardly any black women had cars, so
they constituted a large majority of
bus users. This was one humiliation
from segregation that was faced daily
by the majority of Montgomery's black
women. The whole black community
was ready for a test case, and the
middle-class,
middle-aged
and
eminently respectable Rosa Parks was
an ideal candidate, Rosa Parks did not
board that bus that day intending to
be arrested (she had only boarded
Blake's bus by accident). However,
when she was faced with Blake's
ultimatum, her lifetime of activism,
the recent plans for a bus boycott and
the mood of the local community
surely made the Montgomery Bus
Boycott inevitable. After the Baton
Rouge boycott, BROWN, Emmett Till
and several recent ugly incidents on
the Montgomery buses, Montgomery
blacks were ripe for community
activism. Given the contemporary
circumstances, it is surely unrealistic to
talk of a 'spontaneous' action.
When subsequently recalling her
actions on 1st December 1955, Mrs
Parks gave the impression that her
actions were indeed spontaneous.
Was this failing memory? Or the desire
to make a more dramatic story?
Rather, it seems probable that
although she had not boarded with
the intent of making a scene, it was
highly unlikely that an activist in her
situation and frame of mind would
simply leave her seat at Blake's
request. Although she had not
planned to trigger off a bus boycott
on that particular day, she wanted
such a boycott. Similarly, although she
had not planned to be the test case,
she wanted such a case and would not
have been true to herself had she not
agreed to be that case.
Encouraged and supported by Jo
Ann Robinson, Nixon asked Rosa Parks
to be the NAACP test case. While
Raymond remonstrated, 'Rosa, the
white folks will kill you', she assented
to Nixon's request. When Rosa was
found guilty of breaking the
segregation laws and fined, the black
community, which had boycotted the
buses for the day of the trial, decided
In March 1955 Colvin
refused to give up her
bus seat to a white
woman, and as a result
was taken to court for
defiance of
Montgomery's bus
segregation laws.
to continue the boycott for as long as
it took the local authorities to improve
conditions on the buses.
What happened to Rosa Parks?
The boycott lasted for a year until
NAACP litigation and economic
pressure forced Montgomery to
desegregate its buses. During that
year, things did not go well for Rosa
Parks, Because of her activism, she lost
her job in Montgomery Fair. Raymond
gave up his job at the Air Force base
where discussion of 'Rosa' had
become a sackable offence. The Parks'
white landlord raised their rent. They
received phoned death threats.
Raymond began to drink and smoke
heavily, 'Rosie, get the hell out of
Montgomery', advised her cousin:
'Whitey is going to kill you,' After
countless death threats, the inability
History Review September 2006 7
The civil rights movement did not spring to life overnight at Montgomery due to
some co-incidental combination of Mrs Parks' arrest and the involvement of an
obscure young minister called Martin Luther King in the resultant boycott.
to
get
work
(they
were
'troublemakers') and jealousy from
within the Montgomery civil nghts
movement (especially from men), the
Parks moved to Detroit,
As the civil rights movement
gained momentum and success in the
South, Rosa frequently returned to
Southern civil rights gatherings. Her
fame and significance increased. In
1975, city officials invited Rosa to
Montgomery
to
celebrate
the
twentieth anniversary of the bus
boycott. When she had left Alabama,
in 1956, there had been no elected
black official; in 1975, there were 200.
Her
iconic
status
was
demonstrated in Nelson Mandela's
1990 visit to Detroit, As the giant of
the black South African struggle for
equal nghts got off the plane he
sought her out, walked toward her
saying 'Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks, Rosa
Parks...'over and over again until they
met in a long, silent embrace.
When Rosa Parks died, in autumn
2005, the old myths of the
spontaneous activism and the start of
the civil rights movement surfaced yet
again.
The Start of the Civil Rights
Movement?
The story of Rosa Parks' activism helps
to illustrate that the civil rights
movement did not spring to life
overnight at Montgomery due to
some co-incidental combination of
Mrs Parks' arrest and the involvement
of an obscure young minister called
Martin Luther King in the resultant
boycott. At every stage of the events
from 1st December 1955 to the
triumphant end of the boycott in
1956, the roots of the actions can be
seen stretching way back.
Firstly, black churches had a long
tradition of activism, ranging from the
Reverend Theodore Jemison, who had
initiated and organised the 1953
Baton Rouge bus boycott, to those
ministers whose sermons on civil
rights inspired Rosa Parks.
Secondly, the NAACP had been
publicising and fighting to improve
8 Histoiy Review Sepiember 2006
the black situation since the early
twentieth
century.
Through
painstaking litigation, NAACP had
won many victories eroding Jim Crow,
such as the 1954 BROWN decision,
which so inspired Rosa Parks. NAACP
had fought on behalf of countless
black litigants before helping to
finance the litigation arising from
Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-6,
Thirdly, there had been many
organisations that had campaigned to
improve the black situation, such as
the
Montgomery
WPC
and
Highlander Folk School, both of which
worked with and inspired Rosa Parks.
Thus the Montgomery Bus Boycott
was very much the tip of the iceberg.
Essentially, the search for the
'trigger event' of the civil rights
movement of the 1960s is rather
unprofitable, especially when it is so
clear that so many of the foundations
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and
the highly publicised events of the
1960s were laid long before.
the civil rights movement in the USA,
see a forthcoming article in History
Review.)
Conclusions
It is easy to understand why so many
myths about Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott have arisen.
The brave little woman who suddenly
could not take it any more is a very
good story. So is the single dramatic
event that galvanised American blacks
into the civil rights movement. The
tired old lady who would not give up
her seat on the bus is easier to fix upon
than painstaking organisers. The
myths are dramatic and appealing but they do a disservice to black
American activism, and particularly to
that of black women. It is time to give
all those activists, including and
especially Rosa Parks herself, credit for
their sustained efforts on behalf of
freedom and equality.
Further Reading
Douglas Brinkley, Mirie Eyes Have
The whole black
community was ready
for a test case, and the
middle-class, middleaged and eminently
respectable Rosa Parks
was an ideal candidate.
Women in the Civil Rights
Movement
The final myth surrounding Rosa Parks
is that which would have us believe
that she was the only female of any
importance involved in the civil rights
movement. It could be argued that
they were at least two others, Ella
Baker (1903-86) and Fannie Lou
Hamer (1917-77), who did far more of
significance than she, (For further
details of their work, and of many
other important woman involved in
Seen the Giory: Tlie Life of Rosa Parf<s
(New York, 2000)
Jo Ann Robinson, The Montgomery
Bus Boycott and the Women Who
5fa/tec//f(Knoxville, 1989)
Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Sfory (New
York, 1992)
Issues to debate
o What motivated Rosa Parks to
become a political activist?
o Why did her defiance of bus
segregation have such profound
effects?
o What place in the history of civil
rights activism should be assigned to
Rosa Parks,
Dr Viv Sanders is Head of History
at Dame Alice Harpur School in
Bedford. Her latest book. Race
Relations in the USA 1863-1980,
was published by Hodder in the
Access series in April 2006.