Farewell Rosa

It is difficult perhaps to imagine today the Montgomery, Alabama of 1955, where the bus was one of very few public conveniences that white and black people shared at all. The city, you see, couldn't afford to run a separate (but equal?) bus system for "coloreds." Yet even though people of color were allowed to ride the same buses as white people, they were expected to pay the driver and then enter the bus through the rear door, and to sit in sections marked as "colored" by a sign, usually designating the first four rows for whites only, but moveable in case the first rows were filled.

Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker T. Washington High School active in the NAACP's Youth Council, was arrested for refusing to relinguish her seat on a public bus to a white man.

By December 1, 1955, the NAACP was actively raising funds for Ms. Colvin's defense. Rosa Parks, also active in the NAACP, had counseled Ms. Colvin. Disappointingly, Ms. Colvin had become pregnant by a much older man soon after her arrest, scandalizing the deeply religious black community and making her an unsuitable symbol for the cause.

Rosa had a righteous resentment of the bus laws. Often, the bus would leave before black passengers who had already paid could get to the rear door to board the bus. On a rainy day in 1943, Rosa dropped her purse after paying the driver and sat briefly on the front seat to retrieve her purse from the aisle. James Blake, the driver, became enraged and barely allowed Rosa to exit the bus before speeding off. She walked home in the rain.

After finishing for the day at work, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery at about 6 p.m. on December 1, 1955. She did not notice that the driver was the same James Blake who had left her in the rain over 10 years earlier. By the time the bus reached the Empire Theatre, all the seats reserved for whites were filled and with more white passengers waiting to board, Blake moved the sign denoting the colored section to a spot behind where Rosa and three other black passengers were seated. Three of the black passengers moved as ordered by Blake. Parks, in an aisle seat, simply slid over to the window seat when that seat was vacated by one of the other black passengers.

I imagine Rosa was bone tired and mad. When Blake said, "Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested." "You may do that," she replied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
Parks later said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night." On Sunday, December 4, the black churches of Montgomery announced the Montgomery Bus Boycott. At a rally that evening, the black community of Montgomery vowed to boycott the bus system until the following terms were met: they were treated with courtesy; black drivers were hired; and seating in the middle of the bus become first-come, first-seated. The modesty of their request is stunning. The boycott was to last 381 days.

The U.S. District Court on June 19, 1956 ruled in Browder v. Gayle, 142 F.Supp. 707, 352 U.S. 903 (1956), that Montgomery's transportation laws "deny and deprive plaintiffs and other Negro citizens similarly situated of the equal protection of the laws and due process of law secured by the Fourteenth Amendment," applying the precedent of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1955). The Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956, deeming racial segregation on buses unconstitutional.

While our flags are flown at half-staff this day in tribute and mourning of the passing of Rosa Parks, our hearts are fully raised up in pride at the achievement of a determined woman who changed our lives forever. Rest in peace, Rosa.