65 years ago, Rosa Parks' arrest ignited the civil rights movement and led to yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Sixty-five years ago, a civil rights icon’s rise began with five paragraphs buried on the bottom of Page 9 of The Montgomery Advertiser: “Negro jailed here for ‘overlooking’ bus segregation.”

That day’s paper had no concept of the history it was covering with the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest of 42-year-old seamstress Rosa Louise McCauley Parks. Under Jim Crow laws, the Tuskegee native had been charged with “ignoring a bus driver who directed her to sit in the rear of the bus.”

The story that’s been told through the decades is that Parks didn’t move because she was physically tired. She later said that wasn’t the case. She was actually tired of being treated like that.

It's the 65th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Here's how to celebrate it

Parks, who sat in the front of the section for Blacks, was one of the Black passengers whom bus driver J.F. Blake told to move to the back of the bus “to equalize the seating.” He could do that because Montgomery gave police powers to bus drivers to enforce segregation.

Parks and Blake also had a previous encounter 12 years earlier when he stopped Parks from entering the front of his bus.

Parks was active in both the NAACP as the secretary of the Alabama and Montgomery chapters, and she was part of the Montgomery Improvement Association. But her arrest wasn’t a planned event.

“I got on it to go home,” Parks told The Advertiser years later.

Rallying to the cause and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

On Dec. 4, Parks made the Advertiser’s front page, the day after thousands of letters were distributed calling on Black riders to refrain from riding city buses. The boycott was just supposed to last a day. Instead, it lasted for more than a year.

By Dec. 6, the boycott took over much of the Advertiser's front page, with photos and a story describing “an estimated 5,000 hymn-singing Negroes” packing the church meeting. That issue also covered Parks’ five-minute court appearance, where she was represented by attorneys Fred Gray and Charles Langford. Parks was fined $14 for violating a state segregation law.

On Dec. 9, the Advertiser reported that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for boycotters in a meeting with bus officials. What King asked for was “first come-first served” seating, with whites still loading into the front and Black passengers in the rear. He also sought more courtesy from the drivers and the hiring of Black drivers.

No agreement was reached. The boycott didn't end until Dec. 20, 1956, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling outlawed segregation on city buses.

Parks' bus arrest wasn't the first and had a heavy cost

Parks wasn’t the first Black bus rider to get arrested for not leaving a bus seat in Montgomery. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin did the same thing nine months earlier. However, the pregnant teen wasn’t seen by the NAACP as someone a movement could be rallied around.

The desegregation victory for Black bus riders came with a heavy cost for Parks, who lost her job at a department store. Her husband also was fired. The couple moved to Detroit, where Parks built a new life working for U.S. Rep. John Conyers' office.

Parks' legacy goes beyond the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest

On Oct. 24, 2005, Parks died in Detroit.

In her life, she was honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Award and by the NAACP with the Spingarn Medal.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor for a civilian.

In commemoration of the 65th anniversary, the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery is offering free admission Dec. 1-5, the day of Mrs. Parks' arrest to the day that the boycott began. More information can be found at troy.edu.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Rosa Parks' 1955 arrest led to desegregation of buses