February 4, 1913 – Birthdate of Rosa Parks & Links to Resources

On this day in history, Rosa McCauley, later Rosa Parks, of African-American, Scots-Irish, and Native American descent, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama.

In Alabama,“Jim Crow laws” were in effect, imposing racial segregation in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation. Blacks were relegated to the back section of public buses, but in addition, if there were a large number of white riders, bus drivers could demand more seats for whites at any time, often forcing black riders, once they had paid their fare, to get off the bus and re-enter through the back door. Those who didn’t comply risked physical violence. Parks later recalled that “The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.” [This quote actually appears in the Congressional Record, Senate, Vol. 152, Pt. 11, July 20 2006, p. 15310.]

Rosa Parks, November 1956

Most Americans think of Rosa Parks as just a poor seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama who one day made a valiant stand and decided not to move to the back of the bus (as was required for African-Americans), single-handedly taking on and helping to change the racist policies of the Jim Crow Era. (Technically, Parks did not sit in the white section at all; she sat in the front row of the “colored” section and refused to give up her seat to a white when the bus got crowded.)

Rosa Parks later became best remembered for her refusal, on December 1, 1955, at age 42, to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Booking photo of Parks

Taylor Branch, author of a masterful three-part series on the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr., provides the details of what happened:

Rosa Parks left the Montgomery Fair department store late in the afternoon for her regular bus ride home. All thirty-six seats of the bus she boarded were soon filled, with twenty-two Negroes seated from the rear and fourteen whites from the front. Driver J.P. Blake, seeing a white man standing in the front of the bus, called out for the four passengers on the row just behind the whites to stand up and move to the back. Nothing happened. Blake finally had to get out of the driver’s seat to speak more firmly to the four Negroes. ‘You better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats,’ he said. At this, three of the Negroes moved to stand in the back of the bus, but Parks responded that she was not in the white section and didn’t think she ought to move. She was in no-man’s-land. Blake said that the white section was where he said it was, and he was telling Parks that she was in it. As he saw the law, the whole idea of no-man’s-land was to give the driver some discretion to keep the races out of each other’s way. He was doing just that. When Parks refused again, he advised her that the same city law that allowed him to regulate no-man’s-land also gave him emergency police power to enforce the segregation codes. He would arrest Parks himself if he had to. Parks replied that he should do what he had to do; she was not moving. She spoke so softly that Blake would not have been able to hear her above the drone of normal bus noise. But the bus was silent. Blake notified Parks that she was officially under arrest. She should not move until he returned with the regular Montgomery police.”

Prior to Parks’ action on December 1, 1955, three other Montgomery blacks had been arrested for not giving up their bus seats, but Parks was deemed by the black leadership to have sufficient inner strength and respect of the community to serve as a rallying point for a boycott. In addition, the leadership thought she – humble yet dignified, would make a good impression on white judges. Planning for a boycott had been taking place since 1949. It required a significant investment of time and resources by the Civil Rights Movement. Word had to get out to the black community, leaflets printed and distributed, ministers asked to spread the word, negotiating demands drawn up, and most importantly, alternative transportation had to be put into place for all the blacks who relied on the bus to get to their jobs, doctor’s appointments, shopping, etc. Volunteer cars were needed, and volunteer drivers, for those who could not walk.

In one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s greatest speeches, he spoke to an audience at the Holt Street Baptist Church about the boycott they began when Mrs. Rosa Parks was taken off the public bus in Montgomery, carried to jail, and arrested for refusing to move to the back:

We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens, and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. We are here also because of our love for democracy, because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.

…And we are not wrong; we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie…”

Many believe this was his most important speech.

Rosa Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background

A good resource for more information on Rosa Parks is the Library of Congress Primary Source Gallery, here. The Library of Congress also, as of February, 2016, made available the papers of Rosa Parks here. As the site explains:

This collection contains thousands of unique artifacts that shed light on this courageous fighter for social justice. The letters, diaries, notes, photographs, and other documents in this collection, which is on loan to the Library for ten years from the Howard G. Buffet Foundation, provide invaluable insights into her life and thoughts.”

You can watch a video of Parks describing her role in the bus boycott here. PBS has more resources on her here. At The National Archives website you can view the police report of the bus incident, and well as her fingerprint records.

Rosa Parks in 1956