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Rosa Parks Arrested | National Geographic Society
Thank you for your feedback. Read More on This Topic. Learn More in these related Britannica articles:. When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Mrs. Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Mrs. Parks remained seated, arguing that she was not in a seat reserved for whites. James Blake, the driver, believed he had the discretion to move the line separating black and white passengers.
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The law was actually somewhat murky on that point, but when Mrs. Parks defied his order, he called the police. Officers Day and Mixon came and promptly arrested her. In police custody, Mrs. Parks was booked, fingerprinted, and briefly incarcerated. The police report shows that she was charged with "refusing to obey orders of bus driver. When she called home, she spoke to her mother, whose first question was "Did they beat you? Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her.
At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter. Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. The couple never had children. On December 1, , Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger.
She later recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in. After a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers.
The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats.
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This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African-American passengers in the back. When an African-American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door. As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers.
Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their seats. The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color.
However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking black passengers give up their seats to white passengers. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed. Three of the other black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?
An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks
The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail. Members of the African-American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, —the day of Parks' trial—in protest of her arrest.
People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African-American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the African-American community gathered at the Mt.
Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies, and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. The MIA believed that Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.
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When Parks arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around local supporters, who rooted her on. Inarguably the biggest event of the day, however, was what Parks' trial had triggered. The city's buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in African-American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40, African-American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day—some as far as 20 miles.
Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. The city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance.