Remebering Rosa Parks: the life and legacy of 'The mother of the Civil Rights Movement'

ON December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old lady with rimless glasses and a petite frame walked to Cleveland Avenue in the heart of downtown Montgomery, Ala., boarded the city bus, took a seat, said a single word, and the rest is history.

Life would never be the same in America, and it surely would never be the same for Rosa Parks, who stepped onto the city bus a department store seamstress in the Jim Crow South, and was led off to the jail minutes later--her first steps on her way to becoming "the Mother of the Civil

Rights Movement."

However, it would take time and reverence--if not death and tribute--for history to fully record how the events on this bus lifted a nation to a higher calling and Parks to iconic status. Neither of which Parks had much of on that day in Montgomery.

If she had, she would have joined most other Blacks in Montgomery in following the rules that governed segregated travel in the South. Blacks entered the bus in the front, paid the same dime that Whites paid, got off the bus and re-entered through the back door, that's if the bus driver hadn't decided to drive away in the midst of the humiliating process. Once on the bus, everyone knew that the first four rows were for Whites only, and could not be used, under any circumstances, by Blacks. If no Whites needed a seat, Blacks could sit there. But if one White person wanted a seat, every Black in the middle section had to get up and stand in the back of the bus.

But on this day, Parks--who only minutes earlier had gotten off her job at the Fair Department Store, where she had been working since early morning taking up hemlines and letting out waistlines for White folks--had had enough.

Impeccably dressed, she sat in the middle section of the 1948 General Motors bus. A White man got on, and every Black man, woman and child in that section got up to make way. Everyone, that is, except Parks. The bus driver, J.F. Blake, asked her to stand up. She said no. He put the bus in park telling her: "Well, I'm going to have you arrested." Parks responded: "You may do that."

Parks knew the routine. Blake got off the bus, and came back a few minutes later with two police officers. Ironically, in 1943, Parks had been arrested for violating a bus-related segregation law. The driver of that bus was the same driver with whom she would have this confrontation some 12 years later.

She was taken to the police station. Her photograph was taken as she was finger-printed. She posed for a mug shot. No one knew then that these photos would become a part of American lore.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) says that Parks'" gaze in this photograph is one of a woman who was not looking for trouble the day she refused to give up her seat; one who was not planning to get arrested ... In her eyes, you see a woman who was ready for the choice she made. One who, when confronted with a decision that could have meant physical harm and certainly meant the loss of her own freedom, was prepared to accept all consequences in the name of what was right--of what was true."

At the time, it was a simple act--one that Parks later said that she never thought would make her famous. If anything, it was an impulsive reaction that had a greater likelihood of getting her killed than prompting any recognition. A rebellious passion for fairness and equality was instilled in Parks by her grandfather, who used to sit in his rocking chair with his shotgun cocked, ready, if needed, to take on Klansmen who would routinely terrorize the community. "You don't put up with bad treatment from anybody," she once said. "It was passed down almost in our genes."

After she was arrested, the first person she called was her friend E.D. Nixon, a Pullman porter active in the NAACP. He called the Rev. Ralph Abernathy first, the Rev. H. H. Hubbard second, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. third.

King, 36, had recently become pastor of the small Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. During the first strategy meeting, King would give such a passionate speech that he was selected to be the spokesperson for the Montgomery Improvement Association, representing thousands of Blacks who had suffered unimaginable indignities in Montgomery.

"We are here this evening for serious business," King said at the first meeting. "Just the other day, one of the finest citizens in Montgomery was taken from a bus and carried to jail because she refused to give her seat to a White person. I'm happy it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity, the height of her character, the depth of her Christian commitment."

Later, Parks explained her actions in her own words. "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old ... I was only 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Less than a week after Parks' arrest, a piecemeal transportation system, consisting of private cars, was formed. And for the next 381 days--through police intimidation--the system would cart some 30,000 Blacks around town. Others walked for miles to their destinations. Parks' arrest seemed to focus long-smoldering emotions. Blacks had made up their minds that they weren't going to get on the bus until Jim Crow got off.