Rosa Park refused to move to the back of the bus. She hoped others would follow her example. And WOW, did they!!
She made good trouble!
The black community boycotted the buses for 381 days (12/5/55 to 12/20/56). They walked to work or created car pools.
Quiet Strength
With her quiet strength, she changed a nation.
In preparation for our trip, I read Rosa’s book, Quiet Strength. Featured in Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, Rosa, Ghandhi, and Eleanor Roosevelt, served as prime examples of introverts who are quietly firm in the pursuit of truth.
Tired and Brave
Tired of the way black people were treated, Rosa quietly refused the bus-drivers order. She would not budge.
Another of my favorite Just Mercy stories is when Bryan met Rosa Parks for the first time in 1985, after he moved to Montgomery. Rosa was in town visiting her dear friend, Johnnie Carr … the woman who had organized people and transportation during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Now in her late 70s, this charismatic, powerful, and inspiring woman befriended Bryan.
Ms. Carr often called Bryan asking him to go someplace and speak or sometimes just to listen. And she meant “LISTEN!”
When Rosa came to town, he was invited to come listen as three old friends reminisced … Ms. Carr, Rosa, and Virginia Durr (still confronting injustice well into her nineties). He loved hearing the spirited talk of these civil rights icons … still planning what they would yet do.
On his first listening visit with Rosa present, he listened for two hours. Then Ms. Parks, as Bryan refers to her, turned to him and sweetly asked, “Now Bryan, tell me who you are and what you’re doing.”
After checking with Ms. Carr for permission to speak, Bryan told her all about his law project, the Equal Justice Initiative, and all the ways they were trying to help people on death row. Then he noticed them all looking at him and realized he had gone on too long. He stopped abruptly.
“Ms. Parks leaned back, smiling. ‘Ooooh, honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired.’”
They all laughed. He looked down a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr said, “That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.”
They made him feel like a young prince.
Storms Brewing
Diana and I exited the Legacy Museum about 12:30 and we made our way to Pannie-George’s kitchen for lunch (restaurant serving African-American cuisine attached to the Museum).
She noticed several texts from her sister warning of severe weather coming our way. Diana checked radar on her phone. Thunderstorms were due to hit Montgomery at 2:30 with worse storms coming later in the evening.
We had two hours to eat lunch, tour the Memorial, and make it back to our hotel. That meant we wouldn’t be able to visit the Rosa Parks Museum. We also wouldn’t be able to return to The Mothers of Gynecology Monument for the full experience.
We were disappointed, but, in the bigger picture, it was a minor inconvenience compared to barriers Ms. Carr, Ms. Parks, and Ms. Duerr, faced … and Bryan continues to face.
After visiting The Memorial, we boarded the tram back to The Museum, located just a six-minute walk from our hotel. Big drops began to hit the windshield as we pulled into The Museum drop-off area.
Fortunately, we had our umbrellas with us. We began huffing it back to the hotel. About a block away, it began to pour. A huge gust of wind yanked our umbrellas sideways. We bent into the wind to keep from toppling over.
On the far lane across the street sat a bus stopped at a traffic light. The driver stared at us pitifully as if wondering what these two crazy white women were doing on the street in this weather.
Get On The Bus
In not-so-quiet firm fashion, I bolted across the street, yelling at Diana, “Come on. Let’s get on that bus.” She followed obediently. 😊
In 2023, the driver of the bus was black. There were only three other passengers … all black. We two white women plopped on seats in the front.
Diana asked the driver if it was possible to drop us off at a drug store or something near the hotel where we could take shelter while we waited the storm out.
He was unable to do that. He had to stick to his route. He suggested that we just sit back and relax until he finished his route. At that point he could help us get a bus that would drop us off at the hotel.
And so, we took an unexpected 45-minute tour of Montgomery, dropping off the original three and picking up another two. His route went through an impoverished area of Montgomery.
He was a very kind man who engaged us in friendly conversation. We asked him how much we owed him. He wouldn’t take a dime.
When his route took us back near the Museum, the wind had died down and the rain had diminished to a sprinkle. We asked him to drop us off there. “We are capable of walking back to the hotel from here,” Diana assured him.
The Difference Good Trouble Made
We couldn’t help but reflect on the difference these sixty-seven years have made … all because of the quiet strength of one woman who refused to move to the back of the bus!
Diana captured the spirit of our Civil Rights Trip:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
~T. S. Eliot
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
What a meaningful trip you two had! Very interesting to hear about your conversation with the bus driver. Thank you for sharing you trip to us!
Meaningful it was! Glad you enjoyed hearing about our trip. I still have one more episode to share. Coming soon. 🙂
Well written, deeply passionate, heart breaking and incredibly educational. I felt as though I was with you. Thank you for taking the time and energy to find the words you needed to describe the experiences of this trip. I have learned a lot, and I thought I already new a lot about those times. The difference is that your personal experience and your tenderness toward the memorials and everywhere you visited brought it to life.
Thank you!
Thank you so much, Penny,
Writing about it helped to deepen the experience for me. Glad you found value … and learned some things as well. I learned more about that time in history, as well. Wish we had had a teacher who would have made history interesting for us when I was in high school. Now I find the subject fascinating, but then it was so dry. One of my classmates had to take no doze to stay awake. Such a loss for us. But I’m making up for that loss now. Thank you again. You affirmation means a lot!
Well written, deeply passionate, heart breaking and incredibly educational. I felt as though I was with you. Thank you for taking the time and energy to find the words you needed to describe the experiences of this trip. I have learned a lot, and I thought I already new a lot about those times. The difference is that your personal experience and your tenderness toward the memorials and everywhere you visited brought it to life.
Thank you!
I loved reading this blogpost. Your nicely-written story of your and Diana’s experience on the bus was such a wonderful example of how things have changed since Rosa Park’s day due greatly to Rosa’s courage and activism. Although there is still SO much progress that needs to be made, the kindness shown to you by the bus driver and the brief relationship the two of you developed with him demonstrates what can happen when people relate out of love rather than hate. Thanks for sharing this..
So glad you loved the account of our trip, Carol. That unexpected and unplanned bus trip really turned out to be a highlight. The driver saved us from a really scary situation. How could we not love him!! The picture of him looking at us standing on that corner being deluged with rain and wind is indelibly etched in my mind. He came along at just the right time! Interesting how the Universe works. I have one more adventure to share. Coming soon! 🙂
What a great story! Sixty-seven years does make me pause and reflect. Thank you for sharing your journey.
Pausing and reflecting is something all of us should be doing more of. Glad sharing my writing brought that forward for you. One more episode to go!