The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (55 page)

119
. Leventhal,
The
Children Coming On
, 100.

120
. Yeakey, “Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 310.

121
. Selby,
Odyssey
, 60.

122
. Nixon, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

123
. Interview of Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

124
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, June 8, 1973, Transcript Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

125
. Parks, taped Haskins interview, December 28, 1988, JHC; Gray,
Bus Ride to Justice
.

126
. Parks, Millner interview, in Garrow,
The Walking City
, 562–63.

127
. Baldwin,
Freedom Is Never Free
, 54.

128
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 66.

129
. Nixon, CRDP, 13–14.

130
. Yeakey, “Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 328.

131
. Parks, CRDP, 13.

132
. As quoted in Jackson, “Born in Montgomery,” 133.

133
. Rosa Parks, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., on November 14, 1985, for
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954–1965)
, available at Washington University Digital Library,
http://digital.wustl.edu/eyesontheprize/
.

134
. Gilmore, interview,
Eyes on the Prize
, 6.

135
. Stewart Burns, ed.,
Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1997), 90.

136
. Janet Stevenson, “Rosa Parks Wouldn’t Budge,”
American Heritage
, February 1972.

137
. As quoted in Jackson, “Born in Montgomery,” 133.

138
. Full text of King’s speech is at “MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church,” Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website,
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/
.

139
. Raines,
My Soul Is Rested
, 49.

140
. As cited in Danielle McGuire, “‘At the Dark End of the Street’: Sexualized Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle,” PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2007, 152.

141
. As cited in Chappell,“‘Dress modestly,’” 88.

142
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 124.

143
.
Mighty Times
, Southern Poverty Law Center.

144
. King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 49.

145
. Parks, Millner interview, in Garrow,
The Walking City
, 563.

146
. Interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

147
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

148
. Robert and Jean Graetz, author interview, July 21, 2010.

149
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 142–43.

150
. Horton, Parks, and Stenhouse, radio interview, HP.

151
. FBI (Montgomery, AL), “Racial Situation, Alabama,” file no. 100–135–61. I made Freedom of Information Act requests for Rosa and Raymond Parks’s FBI files, but the FBI said they had no files on either. In February 2006, the
Detroit News
reported that the FBI claimed they had only one file on Rosa Parks, from the Detroit field office, which had been destroyed (“FBI Says Only 1 File on Rosa Parks,” February 6, 2006). I have found FBI documents from the Alabama years relating to the boycott that have Parks’s name in capital letters, usually a signal that they considered the individual a person of interest and would have kept a file.

152
. Interview with Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, August 22–23, 1978, BWOHP, 255.

153
. Shapiro to Parks, undated, Folder 1–5, RPA.

154
. Ibid.

155
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 594. This is often misattributed to an encounter between Dr. King and an elderly walker.

156
. Martin Luther King, “Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March,” March 25, 1965.

157
. Jarrett, “The Forgotten Heroes.”

158
. Description of mass meetings, Box 4, Folder 2, VP. This chant comes from March 1, 1956.

159
. Interview with Joe Azbell, Box 3, Folder 14, VP.

160
. Ibid.

161
. Interview with Sarah Coleman, Box 4, Folder 1, VP.

162
. I am greatly indebted to Andrew Salinas at Tulane University’s Amistad Research Center, who apprised me of Valien’s research, which provides an unparalleled view of the protest from January to April 1956.

163
. All of these rumors and many more are found in the interviews done by Valien’s research team. Valien’s researchers were particularly interested in what white Montgomerians believed about the boycott and probed for it.

164
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 584.

165
. Metcalf,
Black Profiles
, 271.

166
. Document II-A-7, RPA.

167
. Interview with Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

168
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 37.

169
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 110.

170
. Parks, CRDP, 23.

171
. “The 2-Edged Sword,”
Montgomery Advertiser
, December 13, 1955.

172
. Interview with I. B. Rutledge and friends, Box 3, Folder 15, VP.

173
. Taylor Branch,
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 148–49.

174
. Interview with unidentified white woman, Box 3, Folder 15, VP.

175
. Anna Holden observations, Box 3, Folder 13, VP.

176
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, xv.

177
. Rosa Parks, J. E. Pierce, and Robert Graetz workshop discussion, August 21, 1956, tape, Integration Workshop/Highlander Series, UC 515A/173, HP.

178
. As quoted in Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 169.

179
. Interview with R. A. Lewis, Box 3, Folder 1, VP.

180
. Parks, CRDP, 19.

181
. Parks to Anne Braden, December 23, 1955, Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

182
. Shapiro to Parks, undated, Folder 1–5, RPP.

183
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 146.

184
. Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 108.

185
. “Reminiscences,” BWOHP, 255.

186
. Interview of Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

187
. Metcalf,
Black Profiles
, 269.

188
. Parks, taped Haskins interview, December 28, 1988, JHC.

189
. Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 227.

190
. Interview with Edna King, Box 4, Folder 3, VP.

191
. Parks, taped Haskins interview, December 28, 1988, JHC.

192
. Interview of Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

193
. Interview of Carter, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

194
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 150.

195
. As cited in Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 80.

196
. Parks, interview,
Eyes on the Prize
, 7.

197
. Parks, Horton, and Nixon, Terkel interview, MHP.

198
. Clifford and Virginia Durr, interview, Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories, Alabama Center for Higher Education, Statewide Oral History Project, Alabama State University.

199
. Danielle McGuire,
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
(New York: Knopf, 2010), 91.

200
. Interview with Beatrice Charles and interview with Dealy Cooksey, Box 4, Folder 3, VP.

201
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 74.

202
. Interview with Rosa Parks, Box 4, Folder 3, VP.

203
. Robert and Jean Graetz, author interview, July 21, 2010.

204
. “Negroes Boycott Cripples Bus Line,”
New York Times
, January 8, 1956.

205
. Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 139–40.

206
. Interview with Joe Fitzpatrick, Box 4, Folder 1, VP.

207
. “Statement in response to question as to why the people in Montgomery, Alabama Walk?” Box 4, Folder 2, VP; Interview with Rosa Parks, Box 4, Folder 3,VP.

208
. Notes on an article in the
Southern Patriot
, January 1966, GMP.

209
. Parks,
My Story
, 167.

210
. Interview with Joe Fitzpatrick, Box 2, Folder 18, VP.

211
. Interview with J. H. Bagley, Box 3, Folder 12, VP.

212
. “Monster Rally at Montgomery,”
Nation
, February 18, 1956.

213
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 154.

214
. Durr to Foreman, February 24, 1956, Folder 127, VDP.

215
. Virginia Durr wrote Nat Hentoff a scathing letter for “mak[ing] a good story out of them and expos[ing] them to the full blows of their enemies”; July 20, 1960, Folder 133, Box 2, VDP.

216
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 133–34.

217
. Interview with Sarah Coleman, Box 4, Folder 3, VP.

218
. Scanned letter, Document I-D-1, RPA.

219
. Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
,150.

220
. Rhea McCauley, author phone interview, May 14, 2012.

221
. Scanned letter, Document I-D-1, RPA.

222
. Interview of Carter, Rosa Parks File 2/7 Box 2, GMP.

223
. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent in Charge, Mobile, AL, “Teletype to Director, FBI: Racial Situation, Montgomery, Alabama,” September 8, 1956.

224
. King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 31.

225
. As quoted in Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 188.

226
. Ibid., 36–42.

227
. Nixon, interview,
Eyes on the Prize
.

228
. First draft of the case, Box V: 27, Folder 9, NAACP. In Parks’s autobiography, she claims she was part of this suit.

229
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 234.

230
. Branch,
Parting the Waters
, 159.

231
. As quoted in Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 166.

232
. To discredit the boycott, the
Montgomery Advertiser
’s editor in chief referred to Nixon as a “fuming white hater.” As cited in Chappell, “‘Dress modestly,’” 91.

233
. Burns,
Daybreak of Freedom
, 104–5. By summer, Graetz changed his mind and believed that Montgomery’s news outlets “were the most objective of all” (Graetz,
White Preacher’s Memoir
, 106).

234
. Blair Kelley,
Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of
Plessy vs. Ferguson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 1, 201.

235
. As quoted in Leventhal,
The
Children Coming On
, 226.

236
. Interview of Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 2, GMP.

237
. Lerone Bennett Jr.,
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America
(New York: Penguin, 1993, rev. ed.), 492.

238
. Garrow,
The
Walking City
, 580.

239
. “Alabama Negroes Rally in Church,” article, Box VI: C53, Folder 10, NAACP.

240
. Ibid.

241
. Parks, CRDP, 21.

242
. As quote in Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 176.

243
. “‘Crime Wave’ in Alabama,”
New York Times
, February 24, 1956.

244
. Wayne Phillips, “Montgomery Is Stage for a Tense Drama,”
New York Times
, March 4, 1956.

245
. Interview with Hardt, Heflin, and White, Box 3, Folder 15, VP.

246
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 160.

247
. Thomas Jackson,
From Civil Rights
to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 56.

248
. Parks,
My Story
, 169.

249
. Testimony of R. A. Parks, M. L. King v. State of Alabama, on file at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, AL.

250
. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff,
The Race Beat
(New York: Random House, 2006), 140–41.

251
. Ibid.

252
. Wayne Phillips, “Montgomery Is Set for a Tense Drama,”
New York Times
, March 4, 1956.

253
. Chappell,“‘Dress modestly,’” 94.

254
. As quoted in Leventhal,
The
Children Coming On
, 156–58.

255
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 88.

256
. Fortenberry, “The Sentinel Queries Rosa Parks.”

1
. Gregory Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story: A Bus Ride, a Boycott, a New Beginning,” in
Blacks in Detroit: A Reprint of Articles from the Detroit Free Press
, Scott McGehee and Susan Watson, eds. (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1980), 13.

2
. Chana Kai Lee,
For Freedom’s Sake
(Urbana: University of Illinois, 1999), 180–81. I am grateful to Chana Kai Lee for her insights that improved this chapter.