Michalle Fain

“I learned that she was a great black person, and she set an example for other blacks, saying, ‘Don’t give up just because of the color of your skin.’ She was important because she was a seamstress and she knitted together the Civil Rights movement. And Dr. Martin Luther King started a boycott and no blacks got on the bus for a year and they won the boycott, and after the boycott they got to sit wherever they wanted on the bus.”

India Sherrod

“What I know about Rosa Parks?”she was a seamstress, and she was with the NAACP for 10 years. One day she got tired of the segregation and when a white person wanted a seat, black people had to move. And the black person had to give them their seat. Rosa Parks was tired of doing this, so one day she refused to give up her seat. I think it was Dec. 1, and the bus driver came with the police, and she was arrested. She was put in jail, and Dr. King came to help her.”

Sheniece Maddox

“She was the person who refused to give her seat to a white man. I believe it was Montgomery, Alabama. I think it was on Dec. 1. I think that we should remember her in many ways. She had a hard life, her husband died, a man robbed her. When she was arrested, she had to pay $10 because she was convicted, and $4 in court fees. I believe we should remember Rosa Parks because if it wasn’t for her, we would not be able to sit on the front of the bus. We would have to go all the way to the back.”

Montrell Thurmond

“I know that she started a boycott when the man asked her to stand up and give up her seat. But she stood up for a purpose because she got tired of everybody bossing black people around. I know that she is important, and she marched with Martin Luther King and made her even more important to Black History.”

Abdul Ogungbada

“I think she was important because she was a great woman and a good advocate that was fighting for human rights. For example, there was a time she was on a bus, and she refused to give up a seat to a white man and she got fined and arrested.”

Diamond Minor

“Rosa Parks died at age 92, and I know that she was important because she helped us sit on the bus and taught us you can do anything if you just try. She was charged $10 for breaking the law for not giving up her seat. And Dr. Martin Luther King helped to get her out of jail.”

Christopher Loggins

“Rosa Parks was a good woman, and she showed that hard work paid off. And what she did on the bus?”not giving up her seat?”showed that she was good person and she cared about people and how people were being treated. This was during segregation, and she helped to create the Civil Rights movement.”

Historical footnotes:

 Dec. 1, 1955 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus. December 6, 1955 – Montgomery Bus Boycott begins and ends December 21, 1956 (381 days). Three months prior to Mrs. Parks’ act of civil disobedience, on Aug. 28, 1955, teenager Emmett Till was killed. The lynched and mutilated body of Emmett Till was found in the Mississippi River with a cotton gin tied to him. The 14-year-old lived on Chicago’s South Side. His courageous mother, Mamie Till Mobley, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son, and kept the casket open during services. She died Jan. 6, 2003.

 One of many forgotten heroes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott is E.D. Nixon. He was the former president of the local NAACP and president of the local chapter of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and it was he who helped organize getting Dr. Martin Luther King to become the president of the (MIA) Montgomery Improvement Association. (E.D. stands for Edgar Daniel.)

 E.D. Nixon’s grandson, Lionel, lives in Chicago and has been a longtime activist, a former aide to Cong. Danny Davis, and a HUD executive.