“The Bus”
By Donnie Williams
Because of Rosa Parks and many of unknown Montgomery residents that were
involved in the bus boycott and a lot more, Montgomery is a better place but we
need to be better.
The Rosa Parks bus, the real one, is in Detroit at the Henry Ford Museum. It
used to be here in Montgomery, but not anymore.
The owners wanted the bus scrapped after it quit running because it was THE
bus. They lived in Chicago and owned most of the bus stations in the south in the
1950s.
Roy Hubert Summerford (my father-in-law) was a friend with the station manager
and the dispatcher they told him the Rosa Parks bus was about to forever be
gone. After a few times trying to change the owners mind he agreed to sell the bus
to Hubert.
At the bus station after 3 times being turned down to buy the bus the owner
finally agreed to sell the bus to Hubert. They said the bus would not ever run
again without a new motor but Hubert was very good with cars and trucks and I
guess with buses too. After he paid for the bus he worked on it for about 30
minutes and cranked it up and droved it to his 10 acres of land outside the city
limits of Montgomery. The bus went dead 3 times on the way to Hubert's land but
it cranked back up and kept going. It was in the winter and Vivian and I were
waiting on him to bring the bus to the land we couldn't wait to see The Rosa
Parks Bus we couldn't believe they let that bus go.
Hubert said that the time for America to know about the bus was far from now
(1970). The KKK was still very much active in Montgomery. He took on the job of
taking care of the bus. He concealed the bus and kept its identity quiet. He feared
that they would bomb it. Notice the Cleveland Ave. at the top of the bus. That is
the name of the street route that the bus took everyday. As this driver got to a
certain place he could roll a bar inside the bus over his head and change the
street marker. In 1971 Hubert took it out of the bus and wrapped it in a blanket
then placed it in the closet to keep it safe. We only took it out when we took
pictures of the bus. He also said that we would know when the time was right to
tell about the bus.
Right away without telling anyone what was on his mind Hubert knew that bus
was as important as the Liberty Bell. Hubert knew its proper place was in a
museum
The owner was still upset with Rosa Parks and did not want that bus in a
museum in Montgomery or anywhere. In 1970 and the owner was still mad about
the bus boycott of 1955 and 56. The boycott had cost the company $3,000 a day.
In 1985 he passed away leaving the bus to his only child, my wife,
Vivian Summerford Williams. I begin to take care of the bus.
In the 1990s the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper found out about the bus and
called me to do a story on the bus but the time was not right and I said no. They
sent a reporter out to the land I don't know how they found out where the bus
was but they did. The reporter went to the bus without my permission and took
pictures of the bus and put it on the front page of the paper and told America
what the bus was and where it was. After that I had to check the bus everyday
and had to run people away from it a lot. The KKK tried to catch it afire and shot
holes in it. After that I had to rent a warehouse store in inside under lock and
key. This time they couldn't find it.
In 2000, the decision was made to sell the bus, so that the world could enjoy it.
However selling was difficult because of proper identification. Everyone in
Montgomery knew it was “The Bus”. At the time Hubert purchased “The Bus” the
employees informally passed on the information about the bus.
Robert Lifson, President of Mastronet, Inc., an Internet auction house, decided he
wanted to auction the bus for Vivian and me. He began a search for documents
authenticating the bus. And he found them.
Mr. Lifson contacted retired employees of the bus company including Mrs.
Margaret Cummings, widow of the former bus station manager Charles Homer
Cummings. Mrs. Cummings provided a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that
her husband had kept during and after the
Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
National City Lines (which was the parent company
of the Montgomery City Bus Lines) had employed a
clipping service to clip and save any newspaper
articles about the company’s bus service. Charles
Cummings had kept the scrapbook of newspaper
articles from the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott.
Next to articles describing the arrest of Rosa Parks,
he wrote "#2857" and "Blake/#2857." James Blake was the bus driver who had
Rosa Parks arrested. Mr. Cummings’ relatives confirm that he jotted down the
bus number because he felt the events were so important.
In September 2001, an article in the Wall Street Journal announced that the Rosa
Parks bus would be available in an Internet auction in October.
Museum staff began researching this opportunity. They spoke to people involved
in the original 1955 events, to those who planned other museum exhibits, and to
historians. A forensic document examiner was hired to see if the scrapbook was
authentic. A museum conservator went to Montgomery to personally examine the
bus. Convinced that this was the Rosa Parks bus, the Museum's leadership
decided to bid on the bus in the Internet auction.
The Henry Ford museum entered the auction of October 25, 2001, and was the
high bidder at $427,919. The other final bidders for the bus, both of whom were
convinced of its authenticity, were the Smithsonian Institution and the city of
Denver, Colorado.
At the same time, the Museum successfully bid on the Montgomery City Bus
Lines scrapbook of newspaper articles with the Rosa Parks bus identified in two
places. With additional grants the Henry Ford Museum has completely restored
“The Bus”.
My mother, Louise Williams had to ride the buses to and from work in the
1950s and knew other women who rode the bus and witnessed how the Blacks
were treated and she choice to boycott the buses during the boycott also. She
walked or rode a cab, but mostly walked.
I can't explain the feeling that I got everytime I
got on that bus. It made me feel
great sometimes I even cried. Now everyone who
gets to see and touch the bus at the museum
can get to feel that too.
I wrote about the bus and the Montgomery Bus
Boycott. The book is “The Thunder of Angels”. I
did this for the people who were involved in the
boycott and never got their story told. I believe God put this on me to do because
of the bus and my mother’s bad experiences on the buses in the 50s and that I
got to meet a lot of the boycott soldiers who became my friends and they told their
stories to me to tell.
Look up The Thunder of Angels : The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke
the Back of Jim Crow by Donnie Williams and you will see a little about the book and
myself. Beware I am a new author. I own a grocery store here in Montgomery it
took me 20 years to write this book.
Thanks, Donnie