December 1 - Rosa Parks' Arrest

This Day in History: 1 December 2019

 

1 December 1955

 

64 years ago, today, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger, due to racial segregation, in Montgomery, Alabama, a key event in the fight for Civil Rights. Rosa rejected the request of bus driver, James F. Blake, to hand over her seat in the "coloured section" to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Rosa Parks' importance in her community inspired the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year, which was the first major direct-action campaign of the Civil Rights Movement. Ohio and Oregon commemorate 'Rosa Parks Day' on this day, the anniversary of her arrest, and she is seen to be a figurehead of the civil rights movement by the world.

 

Despite this, Rosa was not the first to protest against segregation through a bus sit-in. Those before her, for example, Bayard Rustin in 1942 and Irene Morgan in 1944, were also arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Rosa Parks. 

 

Bayard Rustin had boarded a bus in Louisville, going to Nashville, but a number of drivers had asked him to move to the back when he had sat in the second row, but Rustin refused. The bus was then stopped by police and Rustin was arrested, beaten and taken to the police station, but was released uncharged.

 

Irene Morgan boarded the Greyhound bus to see her mother after experiencing a miscarriage and sat down next to another African American woman carrying an infant. A white couple boarded, and the bus driver ordered Morgan and her seatmate to hand away their seats. Her seatmate surrendered, but Morgan refused, and the bus driver departed the bus to find a sheriff. He presented her with an arrest warrant, but Morgan tore up the paper. The sheriff then touched her to pull her out of her seat and she kicked him in the groin. She was arrested, and her case was later taken to the Virginia Supreme Court with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), who ruled her in violation of the law. She then took her case to the US Supreme Court and won.

 

Want to find out more on the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Visit https://www.britannica.com/event/Montgomery-bus-boycott for more information on the acts of Rosa Parks and her civil rights movement partner, Martin Luther King Jr.