By Noreen Kompanik
Sometimes a single act of defiance can be the catalyst for momentous change. Especially when it’s a righteous defiance against injustice. On December 1, 1955, 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. She took a seat after a long day of working as a seamstress at a local department store. The bus was crowded and more people were coming onboard. Driver James F. Blake ordered a row in the “colored” section vacated so white passengers could be seated. Two complied.
But Rosa Parks stood her ground, quietly refusing to stand up and relinquish her seat for a white man to sit. Little did she know that this was a moment that would forever change history. Two police officers boarded the bus and arrested Parks. She was taken to a local precinct, booked, and jailed. This was the first arrest for this well-liked, law-abiding citizen.
The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the powers of a police officer for carrying out the provisions of the code. That meant they could require black passengers to give up their seats for whites. Rosa Parks explained that “People always said that I gave up my seat because I was tired, but it isn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Her actions on this historic day had never been planned as some may believe, but they would yield huge consequences, and inspire leaders of the local Black community, including a young minister new to Montgomery, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Word of Rosa Parks’ arrest spread quickly and Montgomery’s Black leaders decided it was now time for action. Blacks had long enough been harassed, humiliated, and victimized on the public buses. Though many complaints were filed, nothing ever changed. It was the nature of the times.
On December 5th, Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, fined $10 and given a suspended sentence. On that same day, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed by Jo Ann Robinson, a civil rights activist and professor at Alabama State College. Her students helped distribute the flyers to the Black community. There would be a boycott of the city buses, and participation was much larger than any of the organizers could have anticipated. Tired of being treated as second-class citizens, the black community embraced the boycott. Money talks. The bus company began losing $3,000 per day as more than 75% of Montgomery’s bus riders were African-American.
I’d always been fascinated by Rosa Parks’ courageous story. So, when the opportunity came to visit the museum dedicated to telling her story in Montgomery, I had to go. While the Rosa Parks Museum isn’t large, the story it tells in photos and displays is both exceptional and profound. Most surprising to me was how far the Jim Crow segregation laws stretched. Most of us are aware of the separate schools and drinking fountains. But the unequal treatment affected virtually every aspect of their lives, touching hospitals, public parks, diners, and hotels. Blacks could only borrow books from a “Black” library, and different Bibles were even used in court to swear in testimony.
It takes a village to change hate and combat the fear of losing power. And Rosa Parks by no means did it alone. Married to Raymond Parks, who’d already been a member of the NAACP, Rosa also joined the local chapter, working with then-president E.D. Nixon, and becoming the chapter’s secretary.
The boycott stretched on, lasting 382 days. But they were days and nights filled with seething anger and unrest. Leaders offering blacks a ride to work or the store were followed. Four black churches were targeted. Even the home of Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery and president of the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) was bombed, his wife Coretta and young daughter inside. A mere two days later, E.D. Nixon’s home was also bombed. Seven conspirators were arrested; all members of the Ku Klux Klan.
But the sword of hatred cuts both ways. 89 mostly-Black protest leaders were also arrested including Rosa Parks. News of the massive arrest spread around the world. Virginia Durr, a white civil rights activist and close friend of Rosa Parks quoted “To arrest all of their leaders was the very thing that was needed to make them more determined.”
Stubborn city leaders were still unwilling to bend to the requests of the Black community for better treatment on the bus system. They would come to realize their refusal to change only fueled more national and international support for the boycott and civil rights struggles. More than 100 reporters descended upon Montgomery during the boycott to research and profile the effort and its leaders. And thousands of courageous people, both black and white, joined the continuing protests demanding equal rights for all.
On June 5, 1956, a federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional and in November, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this ruling. On December 20th, Martin Luther King called for the boycott to end. Though it took 13 months, victory was finally achieved. One of the poignant mannequin displays in the museum shows King, Civil Rights leader Ralph Abernathy, E.D. Nixon, and white Civil Rights lawyer Glenn Smiley all sitting together on an integrated bus.
Rosa Parks’ story will forever be remembered as the one who became “tired of giving in,” yet worked tirelessly her whole life to ensure fair treatment for all.
In 1957, Parks moved to Detroit, Michigan where she became a deaconess in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). She was also employed by Congressman John Conyers from 1965 to 1988 and later co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self–Development in honor of her late husband. Rosa’s ability to see the energy of our youth as one powerful force for change has been called one of her most “treasured themes of human priorities.”
It’s no wonder this brave woman was bestowed so many honors. In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1999, she was presented the Congressional Gold Medal.
On October 24, 2005, Rosa Parks made her peaceful transition to a new realm. As perhaps one of her greatest honors, she was transported to Washington, D.C. in a bus similar to the one in which she made her quiet protest. There to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
Her exemplification of courage, dignity, and determination is one for the annuls of history. Once asked about her decision to not give up her seat on the bus she responded “You must never be fearful about what you are doing when what you are doing is right.”
All photos by Noreen Kompanik
