The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (52 page)

106
. Ibid.

107
. Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 54.

108
. Leventhal,
The
Children Coming On
, 45–46.

109
. Selby,
Odyssey
, 57.

110
. Leventhal,
The
Children Coming On
, 14.

111
. Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 40.

112
. Rosa Parks, interview,
Eyes on the Prize
, 1–2; MB-NAACP minutes, 1954–55, Box 1, Book 2, SC.

113
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

114
. Jackson, “Born in Montgomery,” 87.

115
. Ibid.

116
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

117
. Rosa Parks, interview by John H. Britton, September 28, 1967, CRDP, 16–17. Parks observed, “[A] few times we would get a better decision, I think, because we were working through the NAACP. . . . It was better to have the branch there than not have it” (17).

118
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 170.

119
. As quoted in Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 41.

120
. Given the racial strictures of the time, it’s not clear how comfortable and open Rosa Parks would have felt with Virginia Durr, despite the white Southerner’s fierce civil rights commitments. Certainly, she greatly valued her relationship with Durr, and the two grew into friends, but it’s unclear how at ease she felt with her during the 1950s.

121
. Septima Clark with Cynthia Stokes Brown,
Ready from Within
(Navarro, CA: Wild Trees Press, 1986), 32.

122
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 45.

123
. Loop College Community Workshop short excerpt, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

124
. Clark,
Ready from Within
, 17.

125
. Ibid.

126
. Loop College excerpt, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

127
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 94.

128
. Parks,
My Story
, 118.

129
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

130
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 240.

131
. Roas Parks, interview by Cynthia Stokes Brown,
Southern Exposure
(Spring 1981): 7.

132
. Ibid.

133
. Parks,
My Story
, 124.

134
. Alice Cobb, interview,
You Got to Move
research files, Folder 1, Box 7, LMP.

135
. Katherine Mellen Charron,
Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 222.

136
. Cobb, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

137
. Virginia Foster Durr,
Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr
(Montgomery: University of Alabama Press, 1985), 279.

138
. Clark,
Ready from Within
, 16–17.

139
. Myles Horton, Rosa Parks, and Richard Stenhouse, radio interview,
Alma John and the Homemakers Club
, WWRL, May 8, 1956, UC 807A Highlander no. 3, HP.

140
. Loop College excerpt, HP.

141
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 231.

142
. Diane McWhorter,
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 92.

143
. Esau Jenkins, “What Started the Whole Thing,” in
Quest for Human Rights: The Oral Recollections of Black South Carolinians
, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC.

144
. Handwritten notes from Highlander, Folder 2–18, RPP.

145
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

146
. Parks,
My Story
, 124.

147
. Clark,
Ready from Within
, 33–34.

148
. McWhorter,
Carry Me Home
, 93.

149
. Stewart Burns, ed.,
Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997), 82.

150
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

151
. Parks,
My Story
, 124; Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 240.

152
. Clark,
Ready from Within
, 323.

153
. Press release, Folder 2–18, RPP.

154
. MB-NAACP minutes.

155
. Aldon Morris,
The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
(New York: Free Press, 1986), 149.

156
. Clark,
Ready from Within
, 34.

157
. Olson,
Freedom’s Daughters
, 107.

158
. Jackson, “Born in Montgomery,” 109.

159
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

160
. Document I-D-9, RPA.

161
. L. C. Fortenberry, “The Sentinel Queries Rosa Parks,”
Los Angeles Sentinel
, August 17, 1958. In 1946, the NAACP tried unsuccessfully to pressure Montgomery Fair to rehire four black women elevator operators who had quit to protest being asked to pull double duties.

162
. Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,”
Poets.org
.

163
. Sullivan,
Freedom Writer
, 103–4.

164
. “Rosa Parks: A Tribute to Her Quiet Strength,” tribute program, Orchestra Hall, November 28, 1999, 55, in author’s possession. Parks became friends with Mamie Till Bradley.

165
. Parks, interview,
Eyes on the Prize
, 2.

166
. Parks, interview by Brown, 16.

167
. Mildred Roxborough, author phone interview, February 27, 2012.

168
.
Chicago Defender
, May 26, 1956.

169
. Sullivan,
Freedom Writer
, 108.

170
. As quoted in Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 57.

171
. David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito,
Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 138–39.

172
. Parks, interview by Brown, 16.

173
. Highlander workshop with Parks, May 27, 1960, Highlander UC 515A, tape 202, part 1, HP.

174
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

1
. George R. Metcalf,
Black Profiles
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 259.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

4
. Lamont Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955–1956,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1979, 197. Some buses may have had small signs.

5
. Myles Horton, Rosa Parks, and Richard Stenhouse, radio interview,
Alma John and the Homemakers Club
, WWRL, May 8, 1956, UC 807A Highlander no. 3, HP.

6
. Earl Selby and Miriam Selby,
Odyssey: Journey through Black America
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 53.

7
. Rosa Parks, interview, June 19, 1981,
You Got to Move
research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.

8
. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 36.

9
. As quoted in David Garrow, ed.,
The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
(Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 112.

10
. Metcalf,
Black Profiles
, 259.

11
. Rosa Parks, interview, April 4, 1956, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Archives,
http://pacificaradioarchives.org/
.

12
. Glenda Gilmore,
Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights 1919-1950
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 376–77.

13
. Rosa Parks,
Rosa Parks: My Story
(New York: Dial Books, 1992), 169.

14
. E. D. Nixon, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., 1979, for
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965)
, available at Washington University Digital Library,
http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/
.

15
. J. Mills Thornton III,
Dividing Lines
:
Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 33–36; McGuire, “At the Dark End of the Street,” 105.

16
. “Two Negroes Face Bus Law Charge,”
Montgomery Advertiser
, June 29, 1949.

17
. Donnie Williams with Wayne Greenshaw,
The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow
(Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2006), 11–12.

18
. Phillip Hoose,
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), 8–9.

19
. Rosa Parks, interview by John H. Britton, September 28, 1967, CRDP, 15.

20
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 22.

21
. Ibid.

22
. Judith Martin, “Rosa Parks Lives in Detroit and Doesn’t Mind the Back Seat Now,”
Washington Post
, June 3, 1968.

23
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 62.

24
. Troy Thomas Jackson, “Born in Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Civil Rights Montgomery,” PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2006, 33.

25
. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 24.

26
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 16.

27
. Ibid., 26.

28
. Robin D. G. Kelley,
Race Rebels
:
Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class
(New York: Free Press, 1996), 68.

29
. Interview with Dave Birmingham, Box 3, Folder 13, VP.

30
. Douglas Brinkley,
Rosa Parks: A Life
(New York: Penguin, 2000), 43.

31
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

32
. “Reorganized Black Women’s Political Congress Takes on Racism, Sexism,”
New York
Amsterdam News
, October 9, 1993.

33
. Parks, interview by Cynthia Stokes Brown,
Southern Exposure
(Spring 1981): 17.

34
. Interview with Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 2, GMP.

35
. In Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 556–57.

36
. Lee Blackwell, “Off the Record,”
Chicago Defender
, April 5, 1956.

37
. Emily Rovetch, ed.,
Like It Is: Arthur E. Thomas Interviews Leaders on Black America
(New York: E. P Dutton, 1981), 50.

38
. Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in
Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers
,
1941–1965
, Vicki Crawford et al., eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 78.

39
. Ibid.

40
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 23.

41
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

42
. Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 32.

43
. Frank Sikora, “Rosa Parks Visits a Different South,”
Birmingham News
, December 2, 1980.

44
. Though the college stood behind Robinson’s organizing of the boycott, political pressures led her to resign in 1960. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 16.

45
. Yeakey, “Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 188–89.

46
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

47
. Gregory Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story: A Bus Ride, a Boycott, a New Beginning,” in
Blacks in Detroit: A Reprint of Articles from the Detroit Free Press
, Scott McGehee and Susan Watson, eds. (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1980), 15.

48
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 30.

49
. Ibid.

50
. Ibid.

51
. Gary Younge, “She Would Not Be Moved,”
Guardian
, December 16, 2000.

52
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 31.

53
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 86.

54
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 32. The police report lists her kicking and scratching (33).

55
. Younge, “She Would Not Be Moved.”

56
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 59.

57
. Virginia Durr, interview by Stanley Smith, 1968, CRDP, 61–62.

58
. Andrew Young and Kabir Sehgal,
Walk in My Shoes: Conversations between a Civil Rights Legend and His Godson on the Journey Ahead
(New York: Palgrave, 2010), 43.

59
. Rosa Parks, Myles Horton, and E. D. Nixon, radio interview by Studs Terkel, June 8, 1973, transcript, Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

60
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 34.

61
. Her case was instead tried under state law. Montgomery city code said no one could be convicted of failing to give up his or her seat unless another seat was available, but it was vague, asserting the law must be obeyed “at the request of any such employee in charge, if there is such a seat vacant”; state law had no such provision. Yeakey, “Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 195.