Remembering Rosa's foot soldiers

By Elinor Shields
BBC News

Rosa Parks was a civil rights icon in life and death

Proposals to place a statue of Rosa Parks on Capitol Hill symbolise her stature in US history.

She was hailed in life and recent death for a simple act that sparked the modern civil rights movement - her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in Alabama, 50 years ago on 1 December.

But the anniversary of the stand that spurred a black boycott of Montgomery buses will also focus on lesser-known soldiers.

Mrs Parks was not the first to face arrest for defying the law that pushed blacks to the back of the bus, and thousands more refused to ride them as long as they remained segregated during the 381-day boycott.

Anniversary organisers now hope to celebrate change - and inspire more.

"We've done a pretty good job," says Johnnie Carr, the 94-year-old president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which formed in 1955 to organise the protest.

"I hope to wake people now [so] we can learn more about how to get along together."

Frontline bus riders

Back in 1955, blacks and whites in Montgomery lived separate, unequal lives.

MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT Aug 1900: Montgomery ordinance requires racial segregation on public transport March 1955: Claudette Colvin arrested, tried and convicted for violation of ordinance Oct 1955: Mary Louise Smith arrested for refusing to give up seat to white woman. Pleads guilty and fined 1 Dec 1955: Rosa Parks arrested 5 Dec 1955: Start of boycott; Mrs Parks faces trial, is convicted and fined $14; Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) formed, with Rev Martin Luther King as president 21 Dec 1956: Montgomery's public transport system legally integrated In pictures: US civil rights movement

The city ordinance demanding segregation on the buses was one of many rigid rules dividing the races.

Others had already disobeyed the law that year. Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were also arrested for refusing to give up their seats and were among five black women whose federal law suit led to the Supreme Court ruling that the segregation was unconstitutional.

Then a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Ms Colvin told the BBC News website she took her stand because of the daily abuse faced by blacks.

"We had to go to a black school, we weren't allowed into a white church, to sit at lunch counters - to try on clothes," she says.

Protest came naturally to her. "It was always in my subconscious. Someone had to prick it."

Local civil rights activists were looking for a test case to challenge the bus segregation laws, and that spring lawyers considered having Ms Colvin sue the bus company.

But before they could file the suit her parents withdrew consent for the action, according to historian J Mills Thornton of the University of Michigan.

"Their role in history is equally important," he says of Ms Colvin and Mrs Parks.

"If Claudette Colvin had not brought the issue of bus segregation to the fore that spring, the arrest of Rosa Parks would not have had the impact it did."

Opening doors

It has been said that Mrs Parks stood her ground when police ordered her to stand at the back of a crowded bus because she was tired.

The boycott opened doors that were closed to the minority and changed minds and rules in government Johnnie Carr, Montgomery Improvement Association

In fact, she had been involved for years in the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), and her husband Raymond was also an activist.

She was seen as the right face for a test case.

"Rosa Parks was clearly a member of the black middle class. She had many friends and contacts among the leadership in the black community," Professor Thornton says.

Local civil rights leader ED Nixon backed her as a standard-bearer of the civil rights movement - and the black community rallied.

Thousands stayed off the buses, using car pools and church vehicles in an act headed by the then little-known Baptist preacher, Rev Martin Luther King.

The action spawned the mass movement which culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and an end to segregation.

"The boycott opened doors that were closed to the minority and changed minds and rules in government," the MIA's Mrs Carr says.

But anniversary organisers say the event also shows the need for a new generation of leaders to continue the fight for civil rights.

"We have come a long way - but we still have a long way to go," Ms Colvin says.