Clinton marks anniversary of historic Montgomery bus boycott

It was on this day, 60 years ago, that Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, becoming in the process synonymous with one of the most infamous moments of the civil rights movement across the Atlantic. Her act of passive resistance ended with Parks’ arrest and helped fuel the Montgomery bus boycott.

Police arrested Rosa Parks for violating Montgomery, Alabama’s racial segregation laws.

National Public Radio teamed up with ASU for the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, hosting a community conversation that will be broadcast during Michel Martin’s radio series “Going There”. First, in the 1946 landmark case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Virginia’s state law segregating public transportation was unconstitutional when applied to interstate bus travel.

Parks was asked many times about the motivation for her actions on that day.

Often portrayed as a humble, ordinary working woman who was simply “tired of giving in”, Parks was already politically advanced. For nearly a year [before the boycott] she would come to my office during lunch hours and we would share stories… and plan.

The woman was taken off a bus and jailed last Thursday night after refusing to leave a section reserved for white passengers.

The three black passengers near Parks moved, but she refused, instead sliding from the aisle seat to the window seat, which would have allowed for the white passenger to sit in any of the three seats in her row. Parks refused, so Blake grabbed her sleeve to push her off the bus.

Dr. Felicia Bell is the Director of the Rosa Parks Museum.

The “Beyond the Bus” Youth Empowerment Summit brought together almost 350 high school and college students from across the state to learn about the boycott.

Hypocrites who capitalize on Parks’ legacy find it easy to pay tribute to a heroine of peaceful protest as they ignore the plight of the tens of thousands of poor people, primarily poor Black and people of color. Under the leadership of a charismatic, but previously unknown preacher named Martin Luther King Jr, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) spearheaded the year-long boycott that captured the attention of the world and heaped pressure on the city’s white authorities to respond to black demands.

FILE – Rosa Parks smiles during a ceremony where she received the Congressional Medal of Freedom in Detroit, Michigan, Nov. 28, 1999.

“If you want to hide something from some parts of the community, put it in a book and that needs to go away as a stereotype of our community, we need to embrace education”, said President Boyd. Bus rider Callie Greer says that buses are not a priority because they are used by people with low incomes, and according to a 2007 survey by the bus system, 84 percent of bus riders are black.