The MTA Salutes Rosa Parks

Click here for press release.

When you board a bus today, you can just pay your fare and take a seat–any seat. That was not always the case for African Americans living in the South.

During the early part of the 20th century, oppressively strict segregation laws were in force in all areas of life, from lunch counters to classrooms, but nowhere were they practiced more fervently than on public transportation. It is commonly known that African Americans were relegated to the rear of both transit and inter-city buses. But in addition to the restrictive seating rules on municipal buses, non-white passengers were required to pay their fare at the front and then exit the bus and re-enter through the rear door rather than walking up the aisle. It wasn't an easy ride.

Rosa Parks – a Montgomery, Alabama department store seamstress - chose to take a stand against racism by keeping her seat--- successfully challenging the Jim Crow segregation laws of the 1950s South.

Ms. Parks, then 42, was a volunteer with the NAACP but she always insisted that her act of civil defiance of an unjust law was not planned. On her way home from work on the evening of December 1st, 1955, Ms. Parks adamantly refused to give up her seat in the fifth row of a Montgomery City Lines (MCL) bus so that a white man could sit in the same row.

While there were vacant seats, the Jim Crow laws forbade "white" and "colored" from even sharing the same row. Though it is not commonly known, Ms. Parks was actually seated in the colored section of the bus when the driver ordered her to stand. Weary of the South's long history of unjust treatment of African Americans. She refused.

For her refusal to give up her seat, Ms. Parks was taken into police custody and fined $10 for violating a city ordinance plus $4. for court fees. She appealed her conviction, formally challenging segregation's legality.

Of course, in the south of the 1950s her act of defiance was especially daring when you consider that she could have faced far more serious legal problems or even physical assault.

Lauded for her courage, Ms. Parks went on to international fame as the spark that ignited a 381-day boycott of the bus company. The pressure of Montgomery's entire population of African Americans abandoning the buses broke the resolve of bus company management and civic leaders, and eventually led to the integration of the Montgomery, Alabama system and abandonment of Jim Crow laws altogether.

Her actions also contributed directly to the transformation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from a 26-year-old minister into a shining light of the civil rights movement.

Ms. Parks, who passed away on October 24th, 2005, at 92, will always stand as a symbol of right over wrong and she will forever be known as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

While everyone remembered Ms. Parks for her actions, MCL coach No. 2857 worked in obscurity for another 15 years before it was quietly retired from service and sold for surplus. It was then parked in a suburban backyard, where it was used as a storage shed and largely forgotten until it was put up for auction by its owners and subsequently purchased.

As a physical symbol of Ms. Parks' resolve and the history of a movement, the now fully restored 1948 coach is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan. Finally, those who board can take a seat–any seat.