Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, leading to her arrest and a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Montgomery laws required segregation on public transportation, with drivers enforcing the code and forcing African-American passengers to turn over their seats to white passengers.
On December 1, 1955, after a long day at a department store in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. You have taken your seat in the section designated for “colored” passengers. The bus began to fill up, and when the driver noticed white passengers standing in the aisle, she stopped the bus and moved the sign indicating the area for black passengers. In the process, she asked four black passengers to give up their seats. Three passengers complied, but Parks remained seated and the driver called the police. Before getting on the bus that fateful day, Parks had no intention of taking a symbolic civil rights stand. But when the bus driver told her to move, Parks realized she was “tired of giving in” to the injustice of segregation. Her decision, and her subsequent arrest, was a pivotal moment leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott.
Pay in front, board in back:
Montgomery laws required all public transportation to be segregated. The drivers had the “powers of a police officer” to enforce the code, but it didn’t specifically give them the right to make passengers give up their seats.
Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of forcing African-American passengers to turn over white passengers — and if they protested, the driver had the authority to refuse service or call the police.
When an African-American passenger gets on a bus, he goes up front to pay for the ticket. The passenger was then forced to get off the bus and board through the back door.
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