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MY FEET ARE )OT TIRED
In the half-century since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white male
passenger, a myth has existed to wit the exact words she said to the bus driver on that
windy 1st December 1955 in Montgomery Alabama.
Many variations have thrived, with the most popular being “My feet are tired”.
The refusal by Parks to give up her seat sparked off a boycott which brought the then
relatively unknown Martin Luther King Jr. to world prominence and renown, a day
has subsequently been set aside in his honour to mark his birth every January.
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day let us take a moment to recount the
seemingly innocuous events that sparked off the end of segregation in America.
On 1st December 1955 at about 5pm after the close of work at the Department store
where she worked, a 42 year-old seamstress by name Rosa Parks boarded a bus home.
As a norm the first 10 rows of seats on very Montgomery bus were reserved for white
passengers only. If these seats were fully occupied then blacks in the next row were
compelled to surrender their seats. All bus drivers were white and had the
responsibility of allocating seats. They could enforce the segregation laws and even
do so with the side arms they were permitted to carry.
In the bus were twenty-two blacks in the “colored” section at the rear, while fourteen
whites were in the “white” section up front. Rosa Parks sat in an aisle seat in the first
row directly behind the white section, next to her was a black man and two black
women sat in two seats across the aisle from her.
At the next bus stop, some white passengers boarded the bus and they filled up the
rest seats in the white section, after they had taken their seats a white man remained
standing.
The bus driver asked that the row of seats; on which Rosa Parks, two black women
and a black man sat, be vacated for the white passenger.
The two black women got up and went to the back of the bus, Rosa Parks adjusted her
legs so that the black man could leave, she then moved into the window seat he had
just vacated.
There were three empty seats yet the white man remained standing.
The bus driver walked up to Rosa Parks and asked “Are you going to stand up?” she
simply responded “No”.
In Rosa Parks’ words:
“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but this
isn’t true. 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 being old then. I was 42. o, the only tired I was, was tired of
giving in.
Godwin Tom-Lawyer LLB (Hons). BL. ACTI. LLM (Wales). otary Public.
[email protected]
LEX PRIMUS
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The bus driver saw me sitting there, and he asked was I going to stand up. I
said “o”. He said, “Well, I’m going to have you arrested”. Then I said,
“You may do that”. These were the only words we said to each other. I
didn’t even know his name, which was James Blake, until we were in court
together. He got out of the bus and stayed outside for a few minutes, waiting
for the police.
As I sat there, I tried not to think about what might happen. I knew that
anything was possible. I could be manhandled or beaten. I could be arrested.
People have asked me if it occurred to me then that I could be the test case
the ational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (AACP)
had been looking for. I did not think about that at all. In fact if I had let
myself think too deeply about what might happen to me, I might have gotten
off the bus. But I chose to remain.” Rosa Parks, My Story (1992)
The bus driver called his supervisor on the wireless, the latter asked if she had been
warned and the bus driver answered yes. The supervisor then gave the go ahead for
the bus driver to exercise his powers and put her off.
The bus driver subsequently returned with Police officers. Rosa Parks was arrested in
her seat, taken off the bus, put in a police car and driven to the station. At the station
she was booked, fingerprinted and jailed.
Rosa Parks’ employer (Virginia Durr, a white civil rights activist) and her husband
(Clifford Durr, a lawyer) along with E.D. Nixon former president of the state and
local NAACP chapters (a Pullman porter) went to the jail and had her released on
bond.
Subsequently Rosa Parks was charged with violating an ordinance which empowered
bus drivers to enforce racial segregation; the charge was later amended to violation of
a code which provided for “Separate Accommodations for White and Colored Races”
On 5th December 1955, she was arraigned. The court room was filled to capacity.
The bus driver and two white women testified that there was a vacant seat in the
colored section but Rosa Parks had refused to seat there. The Prosecution further
argued that the State segregation law gave bus drivers unlimited power of
enforcement.
Rosa Parks pleaded not guilty but did not testify. Her lawyers (Fred Gray and Charles
Langford) then proceeded to challenge the constitutionality of the Alabama bus
segregation law, but were unsuccessful in their bid.
Rosa Parks was found guilty of refusing to vacate her seat for a white man even
though there were three other adjoining seats which were empty. She was fined $10
plus $4 in court costs.
Her lawyers filed an appeal.
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) of which
Rosa Parks was a member decided to organize a bus boycott.
Godwin Tom-Lawyer LLB (Hons). BL. ACTI. LLM (Wales). otary Public.
[email protected]
LEX PRIMUS
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That morning a 26-year old pastor Martin Luther King Jr. of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church had been nominated as President of the Montgomery Improvement
Association, in the evening of the same day about 4,000 people attended a church
service at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave a moving speech excerpts of which were
“…You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of
being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression …tired of being flung
across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of
nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being
pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amidst
the piercing chill of an alpine )ovember.
Right here in Montgomery when the history books are written in the
future, somebody will have to say, ‘There lived a race of people, fleecy
locks and black complexion…who had the moral courage to stand up for
their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of
history and of civilization’. And we’re gonna do that. God grant that we
will do it before it’s too late”
The bus boycott witnessed black people walking long distances on foot or hitching
rides where they could. It also caused a severe financial loss to the Montgomery Bus
Co. because two-thirds of the bus passengers were black.
On 21st February 1956 Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and 89 other blacks were
indicted by a grand jury for conspiracy to boycott the buses.
Martin Luther King Jr. trial was fast tracked and he was convicted and fined $500
plus court costs for the offence. According to the judge, he was spared a harsher
sentence because he urged non-violence.
While Rosa Parks’ appeal was still pending, the Montgomery Improvement
Association on 1st February 1956 filed a suit, Browder v. Gayle, at the U.S. District
Court for the Middle District of Alabama to constitutionally challenge Alabama’s
segregation laws.
Arguments in the case reviewed previous decisions of the United States Supreme
Court, mainly Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which was the locus classicus case for
establishing the doctrine of “separate but equal” and Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka (1954) where by a unanimous 9-0 decision the United States Supreme Court
held that “In the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has
no place”.
However Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka did not expressly overrule Plessy v.
Ferguson.
It was now left to an all white panel of judges to determine if “separate but equal” was
still the law.
One of the judges dissented on the basis that Brown v. Board of Education did not
apply to public transportation.
Godwin Tom-Lawyer LLB (Hons). BL. ACTI. LLM (Wales). otary Public.
[email protected]
LEX PRIMUS
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But by a 2-1 majority (Judges Frank M. Johnson Jr. and Richard Rives) the U.S.
District Court for the Middle District of Alabama decided that Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka had impliedly even though not explicitly overruled Plessy v.
Ferguson..
The Court went on to say:
“…there is no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can
be validly applied to public carrier transportation within the City of
Montgomery and its police jurisdiction.
We hold that the statutes and ordinances requiring segregation of the white
and colored races on motor buses … violate the due process and equal
protection of the law clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States”
On 13th November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the Alabama District
Court’s decision in Browder v. Gayle; subsequently the principle was extended to
cover other segregated public facilities like public beaches and golf courses.
On 21st December 1956, after 381 days of boycott, Rosa Parks sat in an integrated
Montgomery bus for the first time. The bus driver (James F. Blake) was on the same
bus.
Recounting the incident, she said “He didn’t react at all. ..either did I”.
Godwin Tom-Lawyer ©
Godwin Tom-Lawyer LLB (Hons). BL. ACTI. LLM (Wales). otary Public.
[email protected]