4 1 December 1 1955 was a huge day for us It was the beginning of the mass bus boycott in our city Montgomery Alabama In Montgomery buses are segregated It all started because Negroes are allowed to sit only in the back rows of the bus Most of us get up and stand if the seats in front reserved for whites fill up and a white person wants to sit down Reginald Brown Church Leader
5 On that December day Rosa Parks sat in a seat toward the back of a full bus When a white man entered the bus the bus driver asked Parks to give her seat to him She refused and was arrested I know that Rosa Parks was not the first brave Negro in this fight for equality So many people laid the groundwork for this boycott Individuals such as Pastor Vernon Johns and organizations such as the Women’s Political Council had wanted to do something about bus segregation before this day Others were even arrested for protesting where Negroes could sit But Parks’s arrest was the spark that inspired us to take action against segregation in our community Hallelujah for that instrumental day E D Nixon played a big role in the beginning of the bus boycott He was Parks’s supervisor at the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP After her arrest Nixon picked Parks’s case to test bus
6 The Chaĥenge from Pastor Johns Vernon Johns was a civil rights pioneer and a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr and Ralph Abernathy He was the pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church before King Johns gave fiery sermons about oppression and segregation He called on African Americans to take action to gain their civil rights He once got off a bus and demanded a refund to protest bus discrimination He also demanded service at a whites-only restaurant in Montgomery segregation He knew she had enough courage and honesty to do it If it weren’t for Nixon I wouldn’t be standing here smiling today After Parks’s arrest he bailed her out of jail Then he called church leaders like myself
7 for support He set up a meeting on December 2 at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church At this meeting we planned to boycott the buses on Monday December 5 Ralph Abernathy pastor at my church helped spread the word that all Negroes should not ride the bus that day I called everyone I knew and told them not to ride the bus on December 5 It wasn’t only Negroes who wanted to stop bus segregation Robert Graetz a white pastor backed our plan He said he would advise his Trinity Lutheran African Americans could sit only in the backs of buses due to bus segregation
