The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (51 page)

93
. Ibid., 74–75.

94
. Ibid., 80–81.

95
. Jarrett, “Forgotten Heroes.”

96
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC; see also Robin D. G. Kelley,
Hammer and Hoe:
Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 125.

97
. Pamela Brooks,
Boycotts, Buses, and Passes: Black Women’s Resistance in the U.S. South and South Africa
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 125.

98
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

99
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 40; Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

100
. Timothy B. Tyson,
Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

101
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 39.

102
. Parks,
My Story
, 81.

103
. Dorothy Autrey, “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama, 1913–1952,” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1985; Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 167.

104
. Esther Cooper Jackson, author interview, December 15, 2009.

105
. Gwen Patton, author phone interview, April 19, 2012.

106
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 42.

107
. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed,
Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth
(New York: Lee & Low Books, 1997), 25.

108
. Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 59.

109
. Parks,
My Story
, 82.

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

2
. Rosa Parks, Myles Horton, and E. D. Nixon, radio interview by Studs Terkel, June 8, 1973, transcript, Box 14, Folder 4, MHP; Willy S. Leventhal,
The Children Coming On: A Retrospective of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
(Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press, 1998), 54.

3
. Rosa Parks, taped interview by Jim Haskins, December 28, 1988, JHC.

4
. Lynne Olson,
Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970
(New York: Scribner, 2002), 97.

5
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

6
. Eliot Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grassroots Social Activism in America, 1921–1964
(New York: Anchor, 1991), 69.

7
. Vernon Jarrett, “The Forgotten Heroes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” series,
Chicago Tribune
, December 1975.

8
. E. D. Nixon, interview,
You Got to Move
research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.

9
. Ibid.

10
. 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), 21–33.

11
. Douglas Brinkley,
Rosa Parks: A Life
(New York: Penguin, 2000), 51.

12
. 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/
.

13
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 51.

14
. Dorothy Autrey, “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama, 1913–1952,” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 1985, 242.

15
. Voting form, Box 4, Folder 8, VP.

16
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 168.

17
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 245.

18
. Parks, Horton, Nixon, Terkel interview, June 8, 1973, Transcript Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

19
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 169.

20
. Interview with Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

21
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 56.

22
. Rosa Parks,
Rosa Parks: My Story
(New York: Dial Books, 1992), 75. In some accounts, she passed on her third try; in others, on her fourth.

23
. George R. Metcalf,
Black Profiles
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 259.

24
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 60–61.

25
. Patricia Sullivan, ed.,
Freedom Writer:
Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years
(New York: Routledge, 2003), 27.

26
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

27
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 168–69.

28
. Jarrett, “Forgotten Heroes.”

29
. Parks, taped Haskins interview, December 28, 1988, JHC.

30
. Parks,
My Story
, 108.

31
. Earl Selby and Miriam Selby,
Odyssey: Journey through Black America
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 51.

32
. Robert and Jean Graetz, author interview, July 21, 2010.

33
. Parks,
My Story
, 97.

34
. For further description of this case, see 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).

35
. Ibid., 6.

36
. Parks,
My Story
, 97-98; Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC. Parks was judicious about the detail she provided about her political activities but not deceptive; it is hard to think of a reason why Parks would independently mention Taylor’s case and the Abbeville sheriff to Jim Haskins and describe an incident between Bellin and the sheriff—and not mention a run-in with him, if she also had one.

37
. See also Danielle McGuire, “‘At the Dark End of the Street’: Sexualized Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle,” PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2007; Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 70.

38
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 44–45.

39
. McGuire,
At the Dark End of the Street
, 26.

40
. Ibid., 36.

41
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 245; Box II: C4, Folder 2, NAACP.

42
. McGuire, “Dark End of the Street,” 67–68.

43
. Listed in Guernsey’s inventory as W-D364 and W-D367, RPA.

44
. As cited in Martha Biondi,
To Stand and Fight
:
The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003),167.

45
. Ibid. The NAACP records for the 1950 meeting, however, do not list Lorch or Parks attending. Perhaps they did—or perhaps Lorch is recalling Parks’s opposition to red-baiting from another time, even leading up to this annual meeting (Box II: A40, NAACP).

46
. Sullivan,
Freedom Writer
, 86.

47
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 245–46.

48
. Branch reports, Box II: C4, Folder 1, NAACP.

49
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

50
. Barbara Ransby,
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 141–43. Parks later told Baker that this trip was the first time she had left Alabama, and it had a significant impression on her. The NAACP’s files contain a March 11, 1946, letter from Parks on the meeting at Jacksonville, saying she was pleased to have met “Miss Baker and Mr. Carter. I met Mr. Jones when he was here last year” (Box II: C4, Folder 2, NAACP). However it seems conceivable that Parks could have attended the Atlanta meeting but not personally have met Baker until Jacksonville.

51
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 67; RP to NAACP, March 11, 1946, Box II: C4, Folder 2, NAACP.

52
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 68–69.

53
. Ransby, Ella Baker, 142.

54
. Extensive correspondence between Montgomery branch and national office found in, Box II: C4, Folder 2, and Box II: C390, Folder 4, NAACP.

55
. Ibid.

56
. A pamphlet from Nixon’s 1945 reelection does not list Parks on the campaign committee. Box II: C4, Folder 2, NAACP.

57
. Williams,
The Thunder of Angels
, 44.

58
. See annual meeting lists in Box II: A35 and Box II: A37, NAACP. I am unable to corroborate who actually attended these meetings.

59
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 69.

60
. Ibid.

61
. Fred Powledge,
Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made It
(New York: Little, Brown, 1991), 74.

62
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 254–55.

63
. Lamont Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955–1956,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1979, 118.

64
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
,169

65
. Parks,
My Story
, 102.

66
. J. Mills Thornton III,
Dividing Lines
:
Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 33–35.

67
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 41.

68
. David Garrow, ed.,
The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
(Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 445–46.

69
. Parks,
My Story
, 100–101.

70
. E. D. Nixon, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., 1979, for
Eyes on the Prize
.

71
. Olson,
Freedom’s Daughters
, 97.

72
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

73
. Williams,
Thunder of Angels
, 45.

74
. Laurie Boush Green,
Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 128–29.

75
. Septima Clark, interview (UC 525A), May 23, 1973, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison.

76
. Interview with Parks, Rosa Parks, Box 2, File 2, GMP.

77
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 249.

78
. Thornton,
Dividing Lines
, 31.

79
. Brinkley,
Rosa Parks
, 73.

80
. Autrey, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama,” 257–58.

81
. Roxanne Brown, “Mother of the Movement: Nation Honors Rosa Parks with Birthday Observance,”
Ebony
, February 1988,

82
. Parks interview transcripts, Box 40, Folder 2, JHC.

83
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP; Parks,
My Story
, 116.

84
. Virginia Durr corroborated this in a 1957 letter. Sullivan,
Freedom Writer
, 148.

85
. “Jazz Drummer Dies in Electric Chair,”
Jet
, April 10, 1958, 48.

86
. Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 183.

87
. Parks,
My Story
, 98.

88
. Phillip Hoose,
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), 23–24.

89
. Folder 1958–1964, Oversize Box, RPP.

90
. Parks,
My Story
, 99.

91
. Ibid.

92
. Wigginton,
Refuse to Stand
, 229.

93
. Emily Rovetch, ed.,
Like It Is: Arthur E. Thomas Interviews Leaders on Black America
(New York: E. P Dutton, 1981), 51.

94
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.

95
. When Cleveland Courts was built, some black residences were destroyed, pushing people out of their homes or rentals. The reliability of the government as a landlord over the years diminished.

96
. Joe Azbell, “City Limits” column,
Montgomery Advertiser
, March 1, 1955; Troy Thomas Jackson, “Born in Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Civil Rights Montgomery,” PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2006, 109.

97
. Interview with Robert Hughes, Box 3, Folder 12, VP.

98
. Interview with Reverend Palmer, Box 3, Folder 12, VP.

99
. Herb Boyd, “Rosa Parks Remembers: Forty Years Later,”
Crisis
103, no. 1 (January 1996).

100
. Rosalyn Oliver King, author phone interview, August 9, 2010.

101
. Hoose,
Claudette Colvin
, 52.

102
. Cassandra Spratling, “Catch the Bus,”
Detroit Free Press
, September 30, 2001.

103
. Rochelle Riley, “Two Women Work So Their Lives Are Worth Parks’s Efforts,”
Detroit Free Press
, November 2, 2005.

104
. Interview with Mary Hays Carter, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 2, GMP.

105
. Parks, interview,
You Got to Move
, LMP.