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Parks refuses to move for white riders

Parks refuses to move for white riders
12/01/1955 AD charged

Parks is charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, segregation law of the Montgomery City code, although technically she had not taken a White-only seat; she had been in a colored section (see below).

Edgar Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and leader of the Pullman Porters Union, and her friend Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail that evening.

After working all day, Parks had boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus, a General Motors Old Look bus belonging to the Montgomery around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for Blacks in the "colored" section. Near the middle of the bus, her row was directly behind the ten seats reserved for White passengers.

Initially, she did not notice that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the White-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several White passengers boarded.

Blake noted that two or three White passengers were standing, as the front of the bus had filled to capacity. He moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four Black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the White passengers could sit.

Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks 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."

By Parks's account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." The Black man sitting next to her gave up his seat.

Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the redesignated colored section. Parks later said about being asked to move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till – a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a White woman in her family's grocery store, whose killers were tried and acquitted – and I just couldn't go back."

Blake asked, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded, "I don't think I should have to stand up."

"When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.'"

Blake called the police to arrest Parks.

Montgomery, AL

Lattitude: 32.3616° N
Longitude: 86.2791° W
Region: North America