Rosa Parks 1913-2005 (Rare 1956 Interview)

It was 50 years ago this December that Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state’s segregation laws. Her act of resistance led to a 13-month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would spark the civil rights movement. And it would inspire freedom struggles abroad including in South Africa. The bus boycott would also help transform a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Junior to national prominence. Rosa Parks’ arrest came just months after the lynching of Emmett Till.

At the time of her arrest, Parks was a 43-year-old seamstress and a seasoned civil rights activist. Since the 1940s she had been active in the NAACP, helped raise money to defend the Scottsboro rape case and attended trainings at the Highlander Folk School of Tennessee. After the successful bus boycott Parks would continue to take part in the civil rights movement in this country. She marched in Selma, Alabama. She took part in the 1963 March on Washington. After moving to Detroit, she worked for Congressman John Conyers.

We go back to 1956 in the midst of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to one of the earliest preserved interviews with Rosa Parks. In April of that year Parks spoke with Pacifica station KPFA in San Francisco about her decision just four months earlier not to move to the back of the bus. The interview comes from the Pacifica Radio Archives.

* Rep. John Conyers, a longtime Congressmember from Detroit. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/1412239