FAYE MOSS: Hello and welcome back to Superstars in History, the talk show that features famous people from the past. I'm your host, Faye Moss. Today we're talking with a courageous woman who took a bus ride that helped change America. She didn't take discrimination sitting down, and her bravery inspired many others in the fight for equality. Please help me welcome Rosa Parks!
ROSA PARKS: Thank you, Faye. It's nice to be here.
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FAYE MOSS: You're most famous for a very fateful bus ride, and I want to hear all about that day. But before that, why don't you tell us about the world you grew up in?
ROSA PARKS: I was born in 1913 and grew up in and around Montgomery, Alabama, during the "Jim Crow" days. Jim Crow was a system of segregation laws and an unwritten code about how black people were to be treated in the South.
Blacks went to different schools, ate in different restaurants, and drank from separate water fountains. We also had to sit in different parts of buses and trains.
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FAYE MOSS: Segregation laws were only part of the problem, right?
ROSA PARKS: That's right. There were also terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan that targeted black people. By the time I was six, the Klan was riding through the black community, burning churches, beating people, and murdering. My grandfather told us to go to bed with our clothes on. That way if the Klan broke into our house, we would be ready to run and get out fast.
FAYE MOSS: That must have been really scary. And back then it wasn't easy for black people to vote for better conditions.
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ROSA PARKS: The white people in charge made it difficult for blacks to vote. They made us take ridiculous tests—guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, things like that—before we could vote. They also charged a fee for voting, and most blacks were too poor to pay. Not being able to vote meant we couldn't elect leaders who would work to change the system. We had to change it ourselves.
FAYE MOSS: Did you start by refusing to move to the back of the bus?
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ROSA PARKS: Well, that's what I was best known for—and it was a very important incident. But it wasn't how I started. By the 1950s I had been working for years with civil rights groups that were trying to make sure blacks could vote. I also helped raise money for the legal defense of people who were arrested for resisting Jim Crow laws—of course, I became one of those people!
FAYE MOSS: Tell us more about that day on the bus.
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ROSA PARKS: It was December 1, 1955. At that point blacks had not demanded that buses be desegregated. We had just asked to be treated with more respect. I was on my way home from work as a seamstress for a department store. I took a seat just behind the "whites only" section of the bus. But when the bus got too full of white people, the bus driver told me to move further back so a white man could have my seat. I just sat there. He shouted at me and told me to move. I said, "No." Then he told me he would have me arrested. I said, "You can do that."
FAYE MOSS: That was so brave!
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ROSA PARKS: Well, other black people had refused to give up their seats for whites before—I had done it before. But they usually just threw us off the bus. When this driver said he would have me arrested, I knew that if I let them take me to jail, we might be able to build a movement around this. And we did! The local black community, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a bus boycott. To protest my arrest, black people refused to ride on city buses. The leaders who organized the boycott intended it to only last one day, but the people of the community kept it up even after I was released from jail.
FAYE MOSS: That's amazing how the community came together.
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ROSA PARKS: It wasn't easy. People had to get to work somehow, and few blacks at the time had cars. Black churches raised money to buy station wagons and formed car pools to take people to work. The white leaders of the city of Montgomery were not happy. The city buses were losing a lot of money because we weren't riding them.
The police harassed the car pool drivers, giving them tickets for traffic violations even when they hadn't committed one. I got many death threats. Dr. King's home was bombed. Fortunately he and his family weren't harmed. But we carried on brave and strong. The boycott lasted for 381 days.
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FAYE MOSS: That's more than a year! How did it end?
ROSA PARKS: Well, while we were all protesting and refusing to ride the buses, the movement's lawyers were working in the courts to challenge the segregation laws. Then on December 20, 1956, a Supreme Court ruling went into effect that made bus segregation illegal. We had won.
FAYE MOSS: Was that the end of the movement?
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ROSA PARKS: Oh no! It was the beginning. The bus boycott showed black Americans that if we could stand up to unfairness and inequality, things would change. The civil rights movement continued to grow. We got many new laws passed to protect our rights. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to discriminate against blacks. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected our right to vote.
As for me and my husband, after the bus boycott we both lost our jobs. Eventually we moved north to Detroit, Michigan, to find work.
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FAYE MOSS: So did you give up activism and settle down to a peaceful life?
ROSA PARKS: Not quite. I guess I was just born to be a troublemaker. I continued to work in the civil rights movement and stayed involved in politics. For many years I was an assistant to a U.S. Congress member. I kept working for good causes as long as I could!
FAYE MOSS: You are truly an inspiration. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mrs. Parks. We'll let you get back to history now.
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ROSA PARKS: Thank you, Faye.
FAYE MOSS: Rosa Parks spent most of her life fighting injustice and inspired a generation of activists to do the same. In 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2005 at the age of 92. Her body lay in state at the U.S. Capitol. She was the first woman and the second African American to be honored in this way.
I hope you enjoyed today's interview. I'll be back soon with another famous face from history!