Rosa Parks Museum

This was very interesting but unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures in the museum. They showed a video of what happened back then and also had a recreation of the scene where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. They also had lots of explanations on the walls, photos, newspaper clipping from the day Rosa Parks was tried for refusing to give up her seat.

From the video, they showed that she was educated and active in the black community before the whole bus incident. So her refusal to give up her seat doesn't seem necessarily as spontaneous or out of sheer exhaustion after working a full day as I thought before. It also turns out the bus driver was the same bus driver who had threatened to throw her out of the bus in the years past.

After her refusal to give up her seat, the black community boycotted the Montgomery bus system. You may remember the empty Dexter Ave. pictures I took last week. The same street was bustling with activity, lots of people, cars, buses, and business in 1950's. I guess back then, Montgomery was a lot busier.

The bus boycott financially drained the Montgomery bus system because mostly black people took the buses to get to work and to home. When the boycott began, people had no idea how long it would last. The boycott lasted 13 months. Much longer than people expected.

To make sure the bus boycott was successful, people walked (mostly black but some white people as well). Interestingly, religious leaders were the key leaders in organizing the boycott and civil rights movement. There were designated carpool places where volunteers drove people to their work places and home. Police officers watched these carpools like hawks to arrest people who took money, passengers who paid for gas, etc. because they could cite that they were working as unlicensed taxi drivers.

Because the Montgomery bus system was hurting financially from the boycott, it decided to raise the fares to (1) teach the blacks not to make waves and (2) to survive financially. The plan backfired because people became more resolved to not take the bus, and people couldn't afford the higher fares and ended up not taking the buses.

I also read that the religious leaders did not call for end of widespread segregation, but they actually called for fair treatment by the bus system and bus drivers. I guess the civil rights leaders took smaller steps rather than trying to change everything at once.