A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Seventy years ago today, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman, made the decision not to give up her seat for a white person. The act would ignite a movement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROSA PARKS: He demanded the seats that we were occupying. The other passengers very reluctantly gave up their seats, but I refused to do so. He then called the officers of the law. They came and placed me under arrest.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Rosa Parks in a 1962 interview with KPFA in Berkeley, California. Now, her arrest led to the Montgomery bus boycott. Her act of defiance is being remembered today in Montgomery, Alabama, where TROY Public Radio's Kyle Gassiott is based. Now, Kyle, this is a moment that is taught in schools. It gets referenced in the civil rights movement, but I think sometimes it's easy to forget the detail surrounding it. So, fill us in.
KYLE GASSIOTT, BYLINE: Yeah, A, it's right. You know, we might think that Rosa Parks' refusal was a spontaneous decision, but the truth is there had been a lot of other Black women who were arrested for the same act and charged with violating segregation laws. But when Parks was arrested, civil rights leaders, including a young Martin Luther King Jr., they decided to fight that in court and it got a lot of media attention.
Now, recently, I spoke with Doris Crenshaw, who was 12 when the boycott started. She says the Black community in Montgomery was ready to fight back against segregation.
DORIS CRENSHAW: In this community, a lot had happened over the years and people were fed up with it, most especially what was going on in the buses. And there were a lot of things going on and people were sick of it. They were tired of it.
GASSIOTT: So, A, they were ready to go to court.
MARTÍNEZ: And now, along with the court challenge came the bus boycott and lasted - what? - 381 days until the Supreme Court ruled against segregating public transportation. That boycott, Kyle, must have been huge for Montgomery.
GASSIOTT: Yeah. There are estimates that the bus system lost around 30- to 40,000 fares a day. And that's because Black residents were now being transported around the city by a complex system of drivers and vehicles. And they were all mobilized by the movement. You know, A, it ran really well in a time long before we're as connected as we are now.
MARTÍNEZ: What's Montgomery like today?
GASSIOTT: Well, you know, the boycott and the civil rights movements are big drivers of tourism here. There are a lot of monuments and tours that preserve the history, and Montgomery is also home of the Equal Justice Initiative, which has a number of exhibits. And Montgomery, as you know, still has a number of monuments to the Confederacy.
Now, one person taking part in today's events is Steven Reed. In 2019, he became Montgomery's first African American mayor. He says, in today's political climate, the message of the bus boycott and the movement it sparked is under threat. He points to the Trump administration's efforts to end diversity programs and says, many are trying to erase America's racially divisive history.
STEVEN REED: This environment with the five-alarm fire, if I can use a city term, when it comes to what is happening to the progress of the Montgomery bus boycott and what it brought about, and it will not be put out just by hoping and wishing and praying.
GASSIOTT: That's one reason why the city's commemorating the 70th anniversary today.
MARTÍNEZ: So tell us about the event today.
GASSIOTT: Well, there's a unity walk planned through downtown. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, Bernice, is visiting Montgomery, and this evening at 6:06 Central Time, organizers will ring bells and mark the time of Rosa Parks' arrest. But not just in Montgomery. Bells are going to ring at the National Cathedral in D.C. and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, among others.
MARTÍNEZ: That was TROY Public Radio's Kyle Gassiott, reporting on the events marking the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott. Kyle, thanks.
GASSIOTT: Thanks, A.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH'S "LAWLESS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
