This Week in History

Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law that required black passengers to give up seats to white passengers when a bus was full. It also required blacks to sit at the back of the bus. Rosa Parks said, “I did not get on the bus to get arrested; I got on the bus to go home.”

A one-day bus boycott coinciding with Parkes’ December 5 court date resulted in an overwhelming African American boycott of the bus system that lasted 381 days. Since black people constituted 70% of the transit system’s riders, most buses carried very few passengers. A November 1956 Supreme Court decision banned segregation on public transportation.

Source(s): Library of Congress

Compiled by Bob Valen