Document – Excerpts from Rosa Parks and E. D. Nixon on the Creation of the Montgomery Improvement

Rosa L. Parks

I had left my work at the men’s alteration shop, a tailor shop in the Montgomery Fair department store, and as I left work, I crossed the street to a drugstore to pick up a few items instead of trying to go directly to the bus stop. And when I had finished this, I came across the street and looked for a Cleveland Avenue bus that apparently had some seats on it. At that time it was a little hard to get a seat on the bus. But when I did get to the entrance to the bus, I got in line with a number of other people who were getting on the same bus.

As I got up on the bus and walked to the seat I saw there was only one vacancy that was just back of where it was considered the white section. So this was the seat that I took, next to the aisle, and a man was sitting next to me. Across the aisle there were two women, and there were a few seats at this point in the very front of the bus that was called the white section. I went on to one stop and I didn’t particularly notice who was getting on the bus, didn’t particularly notice the other people getting on. And on the third stop there were some people getting on, and at this point all of the front seats were taken. Now in the beginning, at the very first stop I had got on the bus, the back of the bus was filled up with people standing in the aisle and I don’t know why this one vacancy that I took was left, because there were quite a few people already standing toward the back of the bus. The third stop is when all the front seats were taken, and this one man was standing and when the driver looked around and saw he was standing, he asked the four of us, the man in the seat with me and the two women across the aisle, to let him have those front seats.

At his first request, didn’t any of us move. Then he spoke again and said, “You’d better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” At this point, of course, the passenger who would have taken the seat hadn’t said anything. In fact, he never did speak to my knowledge. When the three people, the man who was in the seat with me and the two women, stood up and moved into the aisle, I remained where I was. When the driver saw that I was still sitting there, he asked if I was going to stand up. I told him, no, I wasn’t. He said, “Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have you arrested.” I told him to go on and have me arrested.

He got off the bus and came back shortly. A few minutes later, two policemen got on the bus, and they approached me and asked if the driver had asked me to stand up, and I said yes, and they wanted to know why I didn’t. I told them I didn’t think I should have to stand up. After I had paid my fare and occupied a seat, I didn’t think I should have to give it up. They placed me under arrest then and had me to get in the police car, and I was taken to jail and booked on suspicion, I believe. The questions were asked, the usual questions they ask a prisoner or somebody that’s under arrest. They had to determine whether or not the driver wanted to press charges or swear out a warrant, which he did. Then they took me to jail and I was placed in a cell. In a little while I was taken from the cell, and my picture was made and fingerprints taken. I went back to the cell then, and a few minutes later I was called back again, and when this happened I found out that Mr. E.D. Nixon and Attorney and Mrs. Clifford Durr had come to make bond for me.

In the meantime before this, of course… I was given permission to make a telephone call after my picture was taken and fingerprints taken. I called my home and spoke to my mother on the telephone and told her what had happened, that I was in jail. She was quite upset and asked me had the police beaten me. I told her, no, I hadn’t been physically injured, but I was being held in jail, and I wanted my husband to come and get me out.… He didn’t have a car at that time, so he had to get someone to bring him down. At the time when he got down, Mr. Nixon and the Durrs had just made bond for me, so we all met at the jail and we went home.…

E.D. Nixon

Then we went on up to the house and I said to Mrs. Parks, “Mrs. Parks”—her mother had some coffee made—I said, “Mrs. Parks, this is the case we’ve been looking for. We can break this situation on the bus with your case.”

She said, “Well, I haven’t thought of it just like that.” So we talked to her mother and her husband, and finally they came ’round, said they’d go along with it.

She said, “All right.” She said, “You know, Mr. Nixon, if you say so, I’ll go along with it.”

I said, “Okay, we can do it.” …

Mrs. Parks was a married woman. She had worked for me for twelve years, and I knew her. She was morally clean, and she had a fairly good academic training. Now, she wasn’t afraid and she didn’t get excited about anything. If there ever was a person that we woulda been able to break the situation that existed on the Montgomery city line, Rosa L. Parks was the woman to use. And I knew that. I probably woulda examined a dozen more before I got there if Mrs. Parks hadn’t come along before I found the right ’un. ’Cause, you see, it’s hard for you to see it, it’s hard for the average person—it’s hard for the black people here in Montgomery to see. It’s hard for a whole lot of people far away from here to see it. But when you have set ’cross the table and talked with black people in investigations as long as I have over a period of years, you just know it.… Well, I spent years in it and I knew it… when I selected Mrs. Parks, that was the person. …

And so after we agreed, oh, I guess we spent a couple of hours discussing this thing. Then I went home and I took a sheet of paper and I drew right in the center of the paper. I used that for the square and then I used Hunter Station, Washington Park, Pickett Springs, all the different areas in Montgomery, and I used a slide rule to get a estimate. I discovered nowhere in Montgomery at that time a man couldn’t walk to work if he wanted to. I said, “We can beat this thing.”

I told my wife about it and I said, “You know what?”

She said, “What?”

I said, “We’re going to boycott the buses.”

She said, “Cold as it is?”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said, “I doubt it.”

I said, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If you keep ’em off when it cold, you won’t have no trouble keeping ’em off when it get hot.”

She shook her head. She said, “My husband! If headaches were selling for a dollar a dozen, my husband would be just the man to walk in the drugstore and say, ‘Give me a dozen headaches.’“ [Laughs]

So anyhow, I recorded quite a few names, starting off with Rev. Abernathy, Rev. Hubbard, Rev. King, and on down the line, and I called some of the people who represent peoples so that they could get the word out. The first man I called was Reverend Ralph Abernathy. He said, “Yes, Brother Nixon, I’ll go along. I think it’s a good thing.”

The second person I called was the late Reverend H.H. Hubbard. He said, “Yes, I’ll go along with you.”

And I called Rev. King, was number three, and he said, “Brother Nixon, let me think about it awhile, and call me back.”

When I called him back, he was number nineteen, and of course, he agreed to go along. I said, “I’m glad you agreed because I already set the meeting up to meet at your church.” ’Course, he didn’t even know Mrs. Parks at that time. I couldn’t attend the meeting, and I asked another man, another minister, Methodist minister, to chair the meeting with the understanding that no permanent officers be elected until I come back, and there wasn’t any elected. …

Then Mrs. Parks was tried that morning and she was found guilty.… I’d been in court off and on for twenty years, hearing different peoples, and very seldom, if ever, there was another black man unless he was being tried. But that particular morning, the morning of December the fifth, 1955, the black man was reborn again. I couldn’t believe it when they found her guilty and I had to go through the vestibule down the hall to the clerk’s office to sign her appeal bond.… People came in that other door, and that door was about ten feet wide, and they was just that crowded in there, people wanting to know what happened. I said, “Well, they found her guilty. Now, I’m gon’ have to make another bond for her. As soon as we can get her bond signed, we’ll bring her right out.” They said, “If you don’t hurry and come out, we’re coming in there and getchya.” I couldn’t believe it. When we got outside, police were standing outside with sawed-off shotguns, and the people all up and down the streets was from sidewalk to sidewalk out there. I looked around there, and I bet you there was over a thousand black people—black men—on the streets out there.

I had wrote three mild recommendations.… I know one was “Seatin’ on the bus, first come, first served,” and “Negro bus drivers in predominant Negro neighborhoods.” I forgot what the other one was. “More courtesy to Negro patrons,” I believe. But anyhow, they agreed on it. Then he and Rev. French wrote the resolution and they read it and I agreed with them. Then we came up with a name for the organization, and I said, “What about the Citizens’ Committee?” Rev. Abernathy said, “No, I don’t want no Citizens’ Committee. Too close to the white Citizens Council.” Then he came up and said, “What about the Montgomery Improvement Association?” I said, “I’ll go along with it,” so we agreed on it.

And Abernathy was sittin’ as close as me in here to you, and he leant over. He said, “Brother Nixon, now you gon’ serve as president, ain’t-chya?” I said, “Naw, not unless’n you all don’t accept my man.” He said, “Who is your man?” I said, “Martin Luther King.” He said, “I’ll go along with it.” French said, “I’ll go along with it.” So then we had not only our recommendation, our resolution, our name, we had our president. …

In that meetin’, that evening, everybody was still—all the ministers was still afraid—and if you read Rev. King’s book, Stride Toward Freedom, you’ll see my quotation in there. They would talk about tryin’ to do it so the white people wouldn’t know about it, and one of ’em said, “… well, we’ll mimeograph some little pamphlets. Everybody come in the meetin’ that night we’ll pass ’em one, and nobody will know how it happened.”

Well, I was sittin’ there boiling over, so mad I didn’t know what to do, so I jumped up, and I forgot about we was up in the balcony of the church. I said, “What the hell you people talkin’ ’bout?” Just like that, see, and I cussed. I said, “How you gonna have a mass meeting, gonna boycott a city bus line without the white folks knowing it?” I said, “You guys have went around here and lived off these poor washwomen all your lives and ain’t never done nothing for ’em. And now you got a chance to do something for ’em, you talkin’ about you don’t want the white folks to know it.”

I said, “Unless’n this program is accepted and brought into the church like a decent, respectable organization,… I’ll take the microphone and tell ’em the reason we don’t have a program is ’cause you all are too scared to stand on your feet and be counted. You oughta make up your mind right now that you gon’ either admit you are a grown man or concede to the fact that you are a bunch of scared boys.” And King hollered that he wasn’t no coward, that nobody called him a coward. …

Rev. King made a masterpiece that evenin’. So when he did, then I came behind him, and I never shall forget, I said, “Good evenin’, my friends.” I said, “I’m so happy to see all of you out here tonight, but I wanna tell you somethin’. If you’re scared, you better get your hat and coat and go home. It’s gon’ be a long drawn-out affair and before it’s over with somebody gon’ die.” I said, “May be me, I don’t know.… The only request I have is if I’m the one that dies, don’t let me die in vain. For twenty-some-odd years I been fighting and saying to myself that I didn’t want the children to come along and have to suffer all the insults that I’ve suffered. Well, hell, I changed my mind tonight.” Just like that. “I decided that I wanted to enjoy some of this freedom myself.” And everybody hollered when I said that.

And anyhow then we took up a collection after that. I served as treasurer for the first three years. We took up a collection, took up $785 there that night. And I ribbed… the commissioner of police that night. He was in the meetin’, with two or three police and everything, two of the black police were there. I had my car there and went by there and I told him at the door, I said, “Say, I cain’t go home with all this money in the street myself. You got to send me home in the police car.” And he turned around and told a policeman named Worthy… “You all take Nixon home.” He carried me home, ’cause nobody thought the thing gon’ last over a week or ten days, then everybody be back on the bus. He carried me home; my wife had to drive my car home by herself.

’Course, even today, people don’t wanna hear the truth about MIA. If you gonna say somethin’ that Rev. King didn’t do, you’re almost spittin’ in folks’ face. I was on an airplane coming down from New York some time ago, sittin’ beside a lady, and she asked me who I was and I told her. She said, ‘Oh, you’re down in Montgomery, Alabama.” She said, “Lord, I don’t know what’ud happened to the black people if Rev. King hadn’t went to town.”

I said, “If Mrs. Parks had got up and given that white man her seat, you’d never aheard of Rev. King.”

When I said that, man, I as well as spit in her face.