Rosa Parks and segregation

NAACP

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Negro News

Issue #1998 05/04/1956

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The year was 1955 as I was walking towards the bus station Rosa and I were having a conversation about how the “segregation” was unfair and someone should’ve done something about it. She was so into the subject that she  started  thinking about many ways to stop this “mental torture” as nice as it would be for that to happen I told her to stop  thinking about it because there was nothing else we  could do except suffering the consequences because of the color of our skin. As the bus arrived she seemed bummed out that I was following the segregation code because she was so motivated. The “colored people” routine when we went on the bus was to go up front, pay then get down to reenter from the back because that’s where our section was…

We had found places in the first row of the colored section, it was us two and two other men so we were 4 in total. The ride home was going good so far but I had a feeling in my gut that something bad was going to happen but I didn’t tell Rosa anything because she’d panic so I kept it to myself. It all started when the bus stopped to get some passengers and they were white there  was clearly no more space in the colored section and the whites only section so I saw the bus driver James Blake get up and move the “colored section” panel a row back and said with a very disgusted  tone “you are in the white area so move it negroes” the first two men got up and ran to  the  back to stand up, we were the last two “negroes”  

left. He then proceeded to yell “move it those people need to sit if you don’t move I will have to make a citizen’s arrest” I got up as quickly as I could and Rosa looked at me with a disappointed face as I was walking away I mouthed “I’m so sorry” then proceeded to take my stuff and run to the back quickly. I had to witness her get yelled at and arrested and I immediately regretted because I realized she was so dedicated to be free. I couldn’t live with the fact that she had went to jail because of me. During those 9months I was thinking about ways to stop this segregation and I came up with the idea of a boycott.  When she got out I thought she wouldn’t take my idea into consideration but she did and she even improved the idea because I didn’t know what we would’ve boycotted.   Since she got arrested because of a bus driver, she decided to boycott the buses and that’s how the 381 bus boycott started.