3. 27
‘No’ on Cleveland Ave
Some time after…
A rotary dial telephone rings. In the darkness of a bedroom, a woman,
nestled between bed sheets, wakes and turns toward a nightstand.
Her husband sleeps by her side.
The telephone rings once more. The woman she sits up, flicks a
table lamp switch, and slips her feet into slippers. She lifts the re-
ceiver to her ear.
“Hello?” Her voice is sleepy. She listens for a moment, takes the
receiver from her ear and hangs up.
“Rosa, who was it?” her husband asks.
“Raymond,” the woman says, “they want me dead.”
the night of…
Martin Luther King Jr., chairman-president of the Montgomery
ImprovementAssociationandanewcomertoMontgomery,Alabama,
looks upon the mass of people congregated before him at the Holt
Street Baptist Church. The Montgomery Improvement Association
meets for the first time to oversee the aims of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott. The boycott calls for African Americans to stop using the
city’s buses. People of colour line the pews, aisles and back of the
church and flow outside, flooding the streets for blocks around.
King speaks:
But we are here in a specific sense because of the bus situation
in Montgomery….This situation is not at all new….For many
years now, Negroes in Montgomery and so many other areas
4. Selections from “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement”
28
have been inflicted with the paralysis of crippling fear on buses
in our community. On so many occasions, Negroes have been
intimidated and humiliated and oppressed because of the sheer
fact that they were Negroes….
Just the other day, just last Thursday to be exact, one of the
finest citizens in Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro
citizens, but one of the finest citizens in Montgomery—was
taken from a bus and carried to jail and arrested because she
refused to get up to give her seat to a white person. Now the
press would have us believe that she refused to leave a reserved
section for Negroes, but I want you to know this evening that
there is no reserved section. The law has never been clarified at
that point. Now I think I speak with legal authority—not that
I have any legal authority, but I think I speak with legal
authority behind me—that the law, the ordinance, the city
ordinance has never been totally clarified.
Mrs. Rosa Parks is a fine person. And, since it had to happen,
I’m happy that it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for
nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity.
Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can
doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to
the teachings of Jesus. And I’m happy, since it had to happen,
it happened to a person that nobody can call a disturbing
factor in the community. Mrs. Parks is a fine Christian person,
unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there. And
just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.
December 1, 1955
A woman stands and waits beside a lone tree at the corner of Dexter
Avenue and Montgomery Street in Montgomery, Alabama. The
moon peers from behind silver-grey clouds. The wind howls, leaves
rustle, a streetlamp flickers. In the distance, two headlights glint and
a city bus engine roars. After a moment, the bus approaches and
Rosa Parks’s refusal to move
to the back of the bus pro-
pelled her, Martin Luther King
Jr. and other nonviolent pro-
testors into the Montgomery
Bus Boycott.
Alabama’s Jim Crow laws
mandated racial segregation
in all public facilities and gave
African Americans “separate,
but equal” status.
On June 5, 1956, the
federal district court ruled
in Browder v. Gayle that
segregation on buses was
unconstitutional. The case
moved on to the United
States Supreme Court, and
on November 13, 1956, the
Supreme Court upheld the
district court’s ruling, ordering
the state to desegregate the
buses.
The boycott officially ended
381 days after Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat on
December 20, 1956. The city
passed a decree authorizing
African American passengers
to sit anywhere they chose on
buses.
5. ‘No’ on Cleveland Ave
29
screeches to a halt. Above the windshield, a sign reads “Cleveland
Avenue.”
The door swings open and the woman steps in. She pulls a purse
from her coat pocket, picks out a ten-cent coin and drops it into the
farebox. Without glancing at the driver, she walks along the aisle
and sits in the middle of the bus.
The bus driver drives to the next stop. The front of the bus fills
quickly, leaving one passenger standing. The driver peers into the
rearview mirror. He rises to his feet, and walks along the aisle to the
womanwhoboardedatthelaststop.Heglaresatherandatthreeother
coloured passengers seated in the middle of the bus.
“Let me have those front seats,” the driver
says.
The passengers remain seated.
“Let me have those seats.”
Three of the coloured passengers stand and
move to the back of the bus.
One sits firmly in her seat. She looks up
at the driver and sees a familiar face. She re-
members a time, twelve years ago, when she
boarded this bus. After she payed her fare,
the driver, this very same man, demanded she
re-board at the rear of the bus. She got off,
walked away, and swore never to ride this bus
again.
“Are you going to stand up?” the driver asks.
The bus driver glares at her. The woman
stares back and with a single word speaks out
against racial segregation in the United States.
“No.”
sources
Caballero, Emmanuel. “Rosa Parks mug shot.” Photograph. Flickr. Flickr.
n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013.
Photo: Flickr
Rosa Parks
6. Selections from “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement”
30
King, Martin Luther. A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard.
New York: Warner Books, 2001. Print.
Woo, Elaine. “She Set Wheels of Justice in Motion.” Los Angeles Times. Los
Angeles Times, 25 Oct. 2005. Web. 18 Mar. 2013.
