The Women Who Said No.
While we commemorate the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the legacy of Rosa Parks, we cannot forget the sacrifices of the many thousands of Black Americans who walked the extra mile to secure the freedoms that we enjoy today.
Among them were names as much deserving of recognition as Rosa Parks, but names we may never find in a textbook on American history.
Meet the Black women who said “No.”
The Chosen One
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
(Source: Open Culture)
On December 1, 1955, local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
This single act of nonviolent resistance helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 13-month struggle (381 days in total) to desegregate the city’s bus system.
Under the leadership of Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), the boycott resulted in the enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared public bus segregation unconstitutional. It was an event that catapulted both King and Parks into the national spotlight.
King recalled in his 1958 memoir of the boycott Stride Toward Freedom that ‘Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history.’ Because ‘her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted,’ she was ‘one of the most respected people in the Negro community.’
Although many news accounts depicted Parks as a tired seamstress, Parks explained the deep roots of her act of resistance in her autobiography:
I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
By that time, she was already a full-edged activist.
So was her husband, Raymond.
Raymond Parks (1903-1977) participated in the effort to free the “Scottsboro Boys” in the 1930’s.
At the age of 42, Rosa Parks was a secretary and youth leader in the local chapter of the NAACP. As a matter of fact, she had been making preparations for “a major youth conference” at the time that she was arrested on the bus.
But there were several other women who, without as much commitment, were caught up in the struggle for the desegregation of public transportation.
The Odd One Out
Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin
(Source: Montgomery Advertiser)
On March 2, 1955 —nine months before the arrest of Rosa Parks —a 15-year-old high school student named Claudette Colvin (1935 – ) challenged bus segregation in Montgomery.
Shortly after Colvin boarded a bus across the street from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the driver asked her to relinquish her seat to a White passenger. When Colvin refused, he called the police.
Colvin remembers how she told the officers that she wouldn’t budge an inch. She would sit where she wanted to.
'I paid my fare and it's my constitutional right.'
The police dragged her off the bus, arrested her, and charged her for assault and battery, disorderly conduct, and violating segregation laws.
Despite early support from the Women’s Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery (a group of Black middle-class educators) and the local branch of the NAACP, Colvin’s case failed to unite the Black community in the early struggle against segregation.
Initially, civil rights leaders Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992) and Edgar Daniel Nixon (1899-1987) saw Colvin’s arrest as an opportunity to test the legality of segregation.
But, while these local leaders lauded Colvin’s bravery, they were hesitant to make this rebellious teenager the face of the struggle.
Still, they tried.
According to The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, a number of civil rights leaders, including King, Nixon, and Robinson met with politicians after the Colvin case ‘but made little headway.’
Believe it or not, Rosa Parks was also there with them in their meetings with city commissioners and bus company officials.
On May 6th, Judge Eugene Carter dismissed Colvin’s segregation charge, precluding the possibility of a federal challenge on constitutional grounds. The case lost momentum.
Then along came Rosa Parks.
As stated in Stanford’s King Encyclopedia:
The arrest of Rosa Parks gave the WPC the opportunity it had been waiting for.
Here’s how Colvin recalled her family’s reaction to the transition:
My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be the one: 'White people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her.'
In a 2015 interview with NPR, Colvin also said this:
I knew why they chose Rosa. They thought I would be too militant for them. They wanted someone mild and genteel.
(emphasis added)
Some time after the incident, Colvin ‘had a child born out of wedlock.’
Now, she was 16 and pregnant.
...I didn't fit the image either, of, you know, someone they would want to show off.
(emphasis added)
E. D. Nixon confirmed this later on, saying that Parks was a more acceptable candidate.
The day after the arrest of Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson and the members of the WPC wrote and distributed a leaflet calling for a one-day boycott of buses the following Monday, December 5th.
It read in part:
Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or to any where on Monday. If you work, take a cab, or share a ride, or walk.
That same evening, community leaders – both civic and religious – met at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and planned the boycott. A committee that included Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990) edited the leaflet and added a call for a mass meeting on Monday evening.
The protest was publicized in the press, on the radio, and on television.
On December 5th, 90% of Montgomery’s Black citizens stayed off the buses.
Those who needed a ride carpooled instead. These carpools were organized by the Black women activists of the WPC.
That afternoon, the leaders met again to form an organization to coordinate efforts towards an extended campaign. They called it the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Without opposition, King was elected president.
The MIA developed the carpool system of the WPC into a program involving about 300 cars.
Many arrests were made over the course of the boycott.
On June 5, 1956, the federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision in November and the boycott was ended the next month.
Rosa Parks has become an icon of Black resistance in the turbulent ’60s. She has even been called the “mother of the modern day Civil Rights Movement.“
For her single act of defiance and her continued involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, Parks received many awards over the course of her life. She was the first person to be honored with a holiday while alive (Rosa Parks Day in her home state of Michigan). She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1979, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the nation’s highest civilian award) in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 1999. She also had a museum, a library, and highways in three states dedicated in her name.
Claudette Colvin served as a secondary plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court case that ultimately overturned bus segregation.
She has had a street named after her. Since 2017, every second day of March is observed in Montgomery as Claudette Colvin Day. However, Claudette Colvin remains a lesser-known figure in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
Other Significant Others
Mary Louise Smith
On October 15, 1955, two months before Rosa Parks, 18-year-old Montgomery resident Mary Louise Smith Ware had been arrested under similar circumstances. But this case, too, failed to stir community leaders to help launch a mass protest.
In 2015, Smith Ware shared her story with NPR’s Alabama affiliate WBHM.
Smith was on her way to her job as a housekeeper for a White family. When no one answered the door, she returned to the crowded bus.
Just then, a White man got on board.
He had gave his seat to a White woman, so he was going to stand. So now, he was going to make me get up and give my seat to him.
After the man spoke to the bus driver, the driver ordered Smith to stand and let the White man sit.
I am already furious cause I didn’t get paid. I think I said a profanity word.
[Laughs]
I said, ‘I am not moving. Not one step.’
(emphasis added)
When the police arrived, Smith was arrested and charged $12. For Smith, this was a full week’s pay.
When civil rights attorneys sought plaintiffs to file a lawsuit the following year, she agreed to testify before three federal judges in Montgomery, Alabama. Three other women who had been arrested for refusing to comply with bus segregation laws also joined the suit.
When the judges asked if she would do it again (refuse to give up her seat), she had only one answer for them: “Yes.“
There were two other women who were arrested before Rosa Parks – Sarah Louise Keys (1929- ) and Irene Morgan (1917-2007).
Irene Morgan
Morgan’s case was 11 years before Parks’ (in July 1944) and took place on a crowded Greyhound bus on its way from Gloucester, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland.
The Seventh-Day Adventist laywoman and practical nurse was recovering from a recent miscarriage and traveling to see a fertility specialist.
Morgan was adamant. She would not move. She would not let the young White mother and her infant child take her spot or the spot of another Black woman holding a six-month-old baby.
In an interview for filmmaker Robin Washington‘s 1995 documentary You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!, Morgan, then in her late 70s, recounted the experience at age 27.
[The Bus Driver] got the sheriff, and the sheriff said, 'I'm going to arrest you.' And I said, 'That's perfectly all right.
But when he handed her an arrest warrant, she tore it up and threw it out a nearby window. As the sheriff proceeded to arrest her, she kicked him in the groin and started gnawing at his arm. A deputy came to assist.
Eventually, Morgan was arrested. Her mother posted $500 for her bail and she herself agreed to pay a $100 fine for resisting arrest, acknowledging that she did assault the sheriff in the process. However, she refused to pay the additional $10 charge for violating the state segregation law, and, with the help of several NAACP lawyers including future Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), her case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The result was that the Court ruled against state-mandated segregation on interstate transportation on June 3, 1946.
The old Virginia law was successfully struck down.
However, there remained a pervasive fear among Blacks and a bitter resistance among Whites across the South. Therefore, segregation continued in all forms of transportation.
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal (the second highest award for a U.S. civilian) from President Bill Clinton in 2001 and was honored posthumously on February 21, 2020 with a historical marker where she had been arrested 76 years earlier.
Sarah Louise Keys
When Private Keys was traveling home on furlough (temporary leave) in 1951, her bus made a stop in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina and switched drivers.
At the time, the 23-year-old Keys was still wearing her Women’s Army Corps (WAC) uniform. It was midnight and, unlike Rosa Parks, she was tired after a full day of work as a clerk and receptionist at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
The new driver walked around collecting tickets but refused to take hers. He told her to move to the back of the bus so that a White Marine could take her seat.
Keys responded by saying that she was comfortable right where she was.
Sarah Keys
(Source: U.S. Army via Our Heritage Magazine)
When the driver was through collecting tickets, he directed all of the passengers to board another bus – everyone except for ‘the woman who refused to move.’
He said:
She could stay there, but this bus isn’t going anywhere.
(emphasis added)
Keys tried to join the other passengers on the next bus, but the driver blocked her path.
She scrambled around the station looking for help, but the attendant refused to serve her. Two policemen arrived shortly afterwards and she was arrested.
As they drove in the dark, Keys asked them where they were going.
They responded:
We’re taking you to the police station and locking you up for the night.
When she asked them why, they said:
We can get you for anything – disorderly conduct – whatever we want.
(emphasis added)
When they reached the jail, she was cold and afraid, but grateful to be alive.
She was still tired. But she could not sleep. The mattress in her cell was just too filthy.
So she chose to stand through the rest of the night in her heels and her uniform.
The next morning, she was made to pay a $25 fine for her release.
This was all the money she had on her at the time.
Later, she took her case to court and lost.
But her father encouraged her along. He knew of Morgan’s victory in Virginia and wanted nothing less for his daughter.
On May 12, 1954, Sarah Keys brought her case before the Interstate Commerce Commission with no luck. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972) and other lawyers helped her to appeal and she testified again before the ICC in November 1955. This time, she won.
Now, Black Americans could travel all over the country without being harassed or asked to move to the back of any bus anywhere.
When she was asked how she felt on the same day the ruling was announced, her response was this:
At long last, I feel free. I’ve never been so happy in my life. It is just the greatest thing for my people – also a wonderful thing for all American people as well.
(emphasis added)
Although it was not for another six years (in 1961) when this ruling was enforced, the Keys case signaled the dawn of a new era in America.
As of this writing, Sarah Keys Evans is still alive and well. She is in her nineties.
A monument was unveiled on July 1, 2020 at the place where she was arrested 68 years prior.
There is also a children’s book based on her recollection and her family’s history of the case, Take a Seat – Make a Stand: A Hero in the Family (2006) by award-winning author Amy Nathan.
What The Struggle Meant Then
In the three decades before the Morgan case, there were more than a dozen Black women who were punished for refusing to move to rear seats on U.S. buses in order to accommodate White passengers. Some were fined and some were jailed.
At the time of Rosa Parks’ arrest, the stories of these women may not have been known to the masses, but those who had been immediately involved in the leadership of the civil rights struggle were well aware.
That is why Jo Ann Robinson’s leaflet read:
Another Negro woman has been arrested and put in jail because she refused to give up her bus seat.
(emphasis added)
Rosa Parks inspired some 40,000 Black citizens to boycott the buses in Montgomery. She served as a dispatcher to coordinate rides for other protesters and was indicted, along with King and over 80 others, for her participation in the boycott.
Parks also traveled to churches and worked with other organizations, including some in the North, to raise funds and to publicize the work of the MIA.
She was not alone in her efforts.
There were other women who led and assisted the movement.
Stanford acknowledges their role.
Although most of the publicity about the protest was centered on the actions of Black ministers, women played crucial roles in the success of the boycott. Women such as Robinson, Johnnie Carr, and Irene West sustained the MIA committees and volunteer networks. Mary Fair Burks of the WPC also attributed the success of the boycott to ‘the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation.’
King was reported to have said during a MIA meeting:
We got more out of this (boycott) than we went in for. We started out to get modified segregation (on buses) but we got total integration.
What The Struggle Means Now
Prior to the integration of public transportation, African-Americans in Montgomery had to enter buses from the back even though they paid their fare at the front. African-Americans had to leave their designated place to make room for other people.
Segregation was more than a set of rules and regulations.
For Black Americans, the stigma of segregation meant that they were subjected to a constant and permanent state of humiliation. It meant that they were supposed to suffer verbal insults in silence. They were supposed to take physical assaults without reciprocity.
One woman slapped before being refused seating, and arrested. Another was slapped as she exited a bus.
But who would care?
White issues came first.
White comfort came first.
For many, many years, Black people paid their fair share.
They poured their all into a system that promised liberty and justice for all.
Meanwhile, White America pushed Black society into a corner and when things got ‘complicated’ (read: politics as usual), when “democracy” was no longer convenient, they were ready to throw us under the bus.
But thank God for Black women.
These women were instrumental in the progress of our society.
Their courage brought us Brown v. Board. Their courage opened the doors for the integration of all public spaces – hotels, restaurants, theaters, libraries, schools, parks, bathrooms, beaches, hospitals, churches, and many, many more.
It’s all because a Black woman said, “No.”
And make no mistake – the struggle continues.
Colvin, Smith, Keys, and Morgan are still waiting to be heard.
In his memoir, King quoted an elderly woman who said that she had joined the boycott – not for her own benefit, but for the good of her children and grandchildren.
We are those grandchildren.
The many Black women who spread the word, called for protests, led sit-ins and demonstrations, and sent letters to city officials continue to be ignored in mainstream academia.
They were ostracized. They were abandoned.
Some lost their jobs. Some lost it all.
They did it for you and they did it for me.
Let us cherish their memory. Let us learn their stories. Let us celebrate their victory. Because their story is our history.
They sat for us. Let us stand for them.
Omri Coke
Omri is a history and science buff with a passion for research.
Through his research, he hopes to inspire others like himself on their own path of self-education and self-development.
This article was originally posted online on December 1, 2019.
It has been re-posted here and updated by the author.
References
Stanford University, The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, The King Encyclopedia – 1, 2, 3, 4
Rosa Parks Institute for Self Development – Rosa Louise Parks Biography
Encyclopedia Virginia – You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!
Seventh-Day Adventists and the Civil Rights Movement (2009) by Samuel G. London, Jr.
NBC News – Woman Who Fought Racial Bus Regulations Dies, August 13, 2007