Author: MassCommons

Once Rosa Parks was arrested, things happened fast that Thursday evening.  Her neighbor, Bertha Butler, had seen Parks being arrested, and called Mrs. E. D. Nixon, who notified her husband.  Nixon called the jail, but...

We come now to the evening of Thursday, December 1, 1955.  Rosa Parks flatly states, “I did not intend to get arrested.  If I had been paying attention, I wouldn’t even have gotten on that bus.”...

On May 21, 1954, Jo Ann Robinson wrote to Montgomery Mayor W. A. Gayle on behalf of the Women’s Political Council.  Professor Robinson, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, taught at Alabama State, and was president of the...

“I don’t think any segregation law angered black people in Montgomery more than bus segregation.  And that had been so since the laws about segregation on public transportation had been passed.  That was...

One lesson I take from Rosa Parks’ telling of her story is the importance of not retelling one’s oppressor’s story. There’s a great example of this in the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. “Then...