The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

by Jeanne Theoharis

  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.”

  CHAPTER FIVE: “IT IS FINE TO BE A HEROINE BUT THE PRICE IS HIGH”

  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.

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

  4. Parks, Quiet Strength, 27. See also VP.


  5. Gilbert Jonas, Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America (New York: Routledge, 2004), 102.

  6. Letter and related materials, Box III: A-273, Folder 3, NAACP.

  7. Branch, Parting the Waters, 186.

  8. Correspondence between Peck and Wilkins, Box III: A-273, Folder 6, NAACP.

  9. Document II-C-2, RPA. In March 1956, Durr writes to a friend that Parks had gotten a job with the MIA only to turn around a month later and say that Parks had “no job now at all.” Durr to Foreman, March 15 and April 19, 1956, Folder 127, VDP.

  10. Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 65–66. Robinson describes Parks positively: “Quiet, unassuming, and pleasant in manner and appearance, dignified and reserved; of high morals and a strong character.”

  11. Durr to Horton, February 18, 1956, Box 11, Folder 1, HP.

  12. Patricia Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years (New York: Routledge, 2003), 107.

  13. Horton to Durr, February 20, 1956, Box 11, Folder 1, HP.

  14. Horton to Parks, February 20, 1956, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

  15. As quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 155.

  16. Parks to Horton, February 25, 1956, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

  17. Durr wrote a friend in March that Parks “has gotten enough money for herself to relieve her own personal difficulties and she thinks that the women should now turn their efforts towards raising money for the Protest.” Sullivan, Freedom Writer, 110.

  18. Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Reconstruction of American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 41.

  19. Telegram, Box 11, Folder 1, HP. Thousands packed Abernathy’s church on February 23 for an evening prayer meeting after the leaders surrendered to the police. Many ministers, including King, spoke; Parks did not.

  20. Memo from King to Abernathy, February 26, 1957, The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 144.

  21. Thomas Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 65.

  22. As quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 275; David Garrow, ed., The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956 (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 524–25.

  23. Virginia Durr, oral history (with Clifford Durr), VDP, 273.

  24. As quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 274–75.

  25. Garrow, The Walking City, 496, 550.

  26. Burns’s Daybreak of Freedom and Garrow’s Bearing the Cross detail the controversy.

  27. Rosa Parks, interview, June 19, 1981, You Got to Move research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.

  28. Nikki Giovanni, author phone interview, March 16, 2010; Gwen Patton, author phone interview, April 19, 2012.

  29. Nikki Giovanni, author interview.

  30. “Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement 1913–2005,” Jet, November 14, 2005.

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

  32. Nikki Giovanni, “Nikki-Rosa,” Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement (New York: William Morrow, 1970).

  33. Douglas Brinkley, conversation with the author, October 2010.

  34. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 17.

  35. L. C. Fortenberry, “Avalon-Carver Hosts Rosa Parks,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 17, 1978.

  36. Herbert Kohl, She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks (New York: New Press, 2005), 120.

  37. Virginia Durr, interview by Stanley Smith, 1968, CRDP, 64–65.

  38. Parks did get a letter in May 1957 providing information she had requested on Fountain House, a community-sponsored organization working to rehabilitate former psychiatric patients. Irvin Rutman to Parks, May 20, 1957, Folder 1–5, RPP.

  39. Brinkley, conversation with author.

  40. George R. Metcalf, Black Profiles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 257.

  41. 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/.

  42. Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story,” 13.

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

  44. Mary Stanton, Journey Toward Justice: Juliette Hampton Morgan and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006).

  45. Nicholas Chriss, “The Cat that Put Jim Crow off the Bus,” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1975.

  46. Interview with Juliette Morgan, Box 3, Folder 15, VP.

  47. Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 103.

  48. Braden to Durr, April 19, 1959, Box 2, Folder 3, VDP.

  49. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 144.

  50. Durr to Foreman, February 11, 1957, File 128, Box 2, VDP.

  51. Nikki Giovanni, “Harvest,” Those Who Ride the Night Winds (New York: William Morrow, 1983).

  52. Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 182.

  53. Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 110.

  54. “Report by Rosa Parks,” Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Parks to Horton, April 27, 1956, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

  57. Ibid; Parks, My Story, 123.

  58. “Local NAACP Rolls Up Big Membership,” Los Angeles Sentinel, April 12, 1956.

  59. Parks (of the MIA) to Ernest Thompson, June 15, 1956, Box 1C, Ernest Thompson Papers, National Negro Labor Council File, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

  60. “Key Bus Boycotter Sparks Rally,” Los Angeles Sentinel, April 5, 1956.

  61. Durr to Mitford, April 16, 1956 Box 201, Folder 2, JMC.

  62. Ibid.

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

  64. Ibid.

  65. Document I-A-2, RPA.

  66. Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 165–67.

  67. “16,000 Rally in New York,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 2, 1956.

  68. Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 75.

  69. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 46; David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 167–68.

  70. Document 1-A-4, RPA.

  71. “Mrs. Rosa Parks Given Plaque; NAACP, $1000,” New York Amsterdam News, May 19, 1956.

  72. Parks to Horton, April 27, 1956, Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

  73. Myles Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997), 189.

  74. Ibid., 190.

  75. Ibid.

  76. Eleanor Roosevelt, “We Can’t Integrate Schools until We Integrate Housing,” Box 22, Folder 22, HP.

  77. Durr to Foreman, May 29, 1956, Box 2, Folder 126, VDP.

  78. Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2000), 163.

  79. Parks, My Story, 174.

  80. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

  81. Rhea McCauley, author interview, May 14, 2012.

  82. Parks, My Story, 175.

  83. “$10,000 Raised at Final NAACP Meet,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 10, 1956.

  84. Durr writes Mitford that the black community failed Parks “mainly [because] she was so proud that she would never admit her need to anyone.” Durr to Mitford, undated, Box 201, Folder 2, JMC.

  85. Durr to Mitford, July 30, 1956, Box 201, Folder 2, JMC.

  86. “Race Urged to Keep Fait
h In Its Fight,” Chicago Defender, June 9, 1956.

  87. Material on September 23, 1956, program found in the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Collection, Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories, Library of Congress.

  88. Robert Graetz, A White Preacher’s Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Montgomery: Black Belt Press, 1998), 101.

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

  90. Graetz, White Preacher’s Memoir, 104.

  91. Ibid.

  92. Branch, Parting the Waters, 200.

  93. Graetz, White Preacher’s Memoir, 102.

  94. Garrow, The Walking City, 35.

  95. Letters between Parks and Current, itineraries, and notices of speaking engagements, Box III: A-124, Folder 8, NAACP.

  96. Ibid.

  97. Ibid.

  98. Durr to Horton, November 15, 1956, Box 11, Folder 1, HP.

  99. Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 164–65.

  100. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 170.

  101. Peter Applebome, “The Man Who Sat Behind Rosa,” New York Times, December 8, 2005.

  102. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 171.

  103. Ibid., 170.

  104. Al Martinez, “L.A. Will Honor Rosa Parks: ‘Mother of Civil Rights’ a Reluctant Celebrity,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1980.

  105. Gary Younge, “White History 101,” Nation, March 5, 2007.

  106. Robert and Jean Graetz, author interview.

  107. Donnie Williams with Wayne Greenshaw, The Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 2006), 255.

  108. Troy Thomas Jackson, “Born in Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Civil Rights Montgomery,” PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2006, 74.

  109. Document II-C-11, RPA.

  110. Durr to Horton, November 5, 1956, Box 11, Folder 1, HP.

  111. Nixon’s plan vacillated between building an independent black group to influence both the Democratic and Republican parties and building a group tied to the Democratic Party. Nixon decided to use his ties to the Democratic Party through Mrs. Roosevelt to make it a black Democratic Party organization.

  112. Sullivan, Freedom Writer, 138.

  113. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 298–99.

  114. Durr to Foreman, December 7, 1956, Box 2, Folder 127, VDP.