Selects: Rosa Parks: Agent of Change
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Hi, everybody. Chuck here. I hope you're all having some cereal or toaster pastries or maybe a bagel, maybe an egg sandwich, maybe some overnight oats, maybe some bacon, maybe some back bacon. Maybe it depends on where you are in the world, what kind of bacon you're eating. Because we all call it bacon and it means a different thing wherever you are. At any rate, I hope you're enjoying some breakfast.

And you should listen to this episode while you eat breakfast. From February 22nd, 2018, Rosa Parks, colon, agent of change. What a great woman in American history. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. So it's Stuff You Should Know.

The podcast. Clean studio version. I know, it feels a little weird in here. Like it's too good for us or something, you know what I mean? Yeah, just so you folks know, Jerry test a couple of the editor engineers here with coming in and cleaning up

The pile of spaghetti that used to flow from the back of her workstation. Nice. Not that it was Jerry's fault. And she said, clean up my mess. Well, she clapped twice in rapid succession. They know what that means. Right. The whole office. I mean, snap to it. Looks good, though. It does. But now we actually have room to put stuff. So we should put some stuff in here. I agree. It's a little bare. A Papa's on right there. That'd be nice. Yeah.

I don't know. Well, we could fit a small Papa's on. Most people don't realize, but this place is lousy with Ikea lamps. I mean, everywhere. And like the cheapest ones. Like one of them is on fire right now. Yeah, that one. Oh, yeah. Smoldering. Smoldering is still fire, Chuck. Speaking of fire. Yes. You want to know somebody who had some fire in her? More than most people realize? Yeah. Rosa Parks.

Who is now one of my all-time heroes. Because before, the Rosa Parks I knew, again, it was like the Harriet Tubman episode. Learned about her in school. She was a great American. Respect her, revere her. Here's why. She didn't give up her seat on the bus. No. Not only is that just the tip of the iceberg, it wasn't until about the last...

Five or so years, I think. No, about the last four years. That like a full picture of this woman and who she was and like what she stood for and what drove her emerged not just to the public in general, but to historians even. Because her personal papers were basically held up in auction for years and years and years. And now, now that they've been donated for like 10 years to the Library of Congress, we're starting to get a clear picture of her. And she was even more –

worth revering than people knew before. Yeah, I mean, I think the...

What the story isn't is Rosa Parks was just a quiet lady who was super tired on the bus one day, so she didn't want to get up. Her dogs were yapping. Yeah, not true. And she even makes a point in her personal paper saying, I was 42 years old. I was no more tired than I was after any day at work. Right. But what I was tired of was being told to get up by a white bus driver to make room for a white passenger. Right.

My dogs weren't barking. Right. So I think one of the reasons why she was kind of whittled down into this woman who was just tired and wasn't going to give up her seat because she shouldn't have had to in the first place. And then she was a very meek, quiet person also is another way that she was drawn. Yeah. I think one of the reasons why she was whittled into that package was because she became –

An icon for the civil rights movement. Yeah. And one of the things that the civil rights movement had to do for better or worse was to get the establishment, both white and black, on the side of the civil rights movement, which was a movement of agitation. And if you agitated at the time, this is the Jim Crow era. Yeah. That meant trouble.

This wasn't like just trouble like people are going to yell at you on Twitter. This was trouble like the cops might arrest you for some made-up infraction and then beat and rape you on the way to the jail, and then you would end up in the prison system kind of trouble. Like this is the kind of trouble that a woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus faced at this time. So the idea of taking a woman who was –

I guess palatable to as many people as possible. Right. And saying, look at this woman. We need to protect this woman's rights and do what's right. I think that's why she got kind of whittled down into that. But looking back now, historically, there's so much more to her than just that. And she was certainly not meek and mild. Yeah. I mean, distilling the story down for school books is –

Is one thing, but like I'm glad now that people can get a more robust picture. Yeah. So a lot of this comes from a website called GreatBlackHeroes.com. Had a really good lengthy article. And then also I want to shout out a book series called Little People, Big Dreams.

And it's a kids book series that we've been reading to my daughter. In fact, it's kind of all she wants to read right now. And they are on great women in history and kind of brutally honest for to be reading to kids.

But they didn't – it's kind of cool. They weren't – they didn't whitewash anything. It's sort of like Maya Angelou was not treated well by white people. Like you read that to your kid. And Rosa Parks is one. And then there's Frida Kahlo, Coco Chanel, Amelia Earhart. Yeah.

Mary Curie, Agatha Christie, and more. But it's pretty brutal. Like they draw Amelia Earhart's skeleton on the beach. Kind of brutal. You know what? That's the only one we haven't gotten to yet because every night it's read Frida, read Frida. Oh, really? But it's literally like Frida Kahlo is lying in the street after she gets hit by a taxi and she's bloody and her legs don't work again after that. So,

So, I mean, it's pretty brutal stuff, but I don't know. It's kind of cool. Like kids can read the stuff and digest it, I think. Sure. It's a good way to begin them on the path toward true stories. And to sharpen them to like a razor's edge at a young age, you know. Look out for taxis. Yeah, that's good. You know. That's good advice at any age. All right. So Rosa Parks, let's go back to where she was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. Yeah.

On February 4th, 1913, well, she was born Rosa Louise McCauley to James and Lenora McCauley, who were a carpenter and schoolteacher, respectively. Right. Her parents split.

I guess she... I don't know how old she was. I guess she was younger than six. But her father went to go look for work up north, and her mom wanted to stay in the south. So she and her mom and her brother moved in with her mother's parents, her grandparents. And her grandfather played a really...

distinct role in shaping her because she moved in with them when she was like I said around six yeah and at the time in this place Pine Level which is outside of Montgomery Alabama uh there was a lot of clan violence a lot of violence against blacks of the hands of the Ku Klux Klan yeah and um

Her grandfather was not having it. He was actually he was the son of a slave woman and Slave owner so he was I believe half-white he was he was a slave himself and

He had an owner at a young age who really brutally mistreated him, tried to starve him for a little bit. And her grandfather developed what she called a very intense, passionate hatred for white people and definitely imparted that to his daughters and his granddaughter, grandchildren, wouldn't let his grandchildren play with white kids, didn't let his daughters work for white families. He was very much, and it sounds like pretty well-founded,

against white people and definitely some of that rubbed off on Rosa at the very least her eyes were opened to just how unjust the system was at the time when she was growing up well yeah and just it wasn't even just through his eyes like she went to a segregated school that she had to walk to right white students were picked up and bused to the school

Um, she went to, uh, an elementary school called the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. Uh, very cool school. It was created, um, by some, uh, northern white northerners, uh, to basically, um, educate

Try and foster education in these more rural black communities in the south and that didn't go over well Educating kids so that school was burned down twice and then couple that with all the you know influence from her grandfather and it's no surprise that Rosa Parks from a very very early age was It was an activist. Yeah, so and being an activist we're talking like from age six onward, right? so

she dropped out of school, which would have been a huge turning point. Um, she had to take care of her grandmother. And then I think her mom later on, cause they both fell ill and she met, I think at age 17 or 18. And then later on at age 19, married her husband, Raymond parks. And he, uh, encouraged her to go back and finish school. And she did. And it

It was a huge move because she was very much meant to be an educated person. So the fact that she met Raymond was a huge influence in that respect. He was also a big influence on her because she said that he was the first activist, like real activist that she ever met. And I believe this was even before the NAACP was in town. This guy was like a grassroots activist.

and he and his group were basically armed. Do you remember in the Black Panthers episode where the whole idea of arming yourself came out of the South? Yeah. This guy was like Raymond Parks was one of the real deal people who originated that. And he and the group of activists that he met with, they would all come to the house and everyone would have a gun.

And apparently Rosa Parks said sometimes there were so many guns on the table that she didn't have any place to set the refreshments during these meetings. But these meetings weren't like, you know, how are we going to get white people back? It was how are we going to protect like the Scottsboro Boys from false rape accusations?

He was an early pre-NAAACP activist in Montgomery. Yeah, and later on was a member of the NAACP. We should do a show on the Scottsboro Boys at some point. It's too much to get into here, but the short version is a group of black men on a train were accused of rape by two white women who just made up this story, basically. Went to trial a few times and

Well, you know what? We'll save the outcome. Okay. Because there are all kinds of outcomes because it went to trial so many times. So she did finish high school and she became involved along with her husband in the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and worked as their secretary for 14 years. So –

Not only was she an activist, but she was involved in service of these organizations. She worked for them. Whatever you need done, I will do. And anyone who's ever volunteered knows that, I guess, foot soldiers, for lack of a better term,

are some of the most important people to – like in the Black Panthers episode when, you know, the women didn't get nearly the recognition they should have gotten for just keeping that organization running on time. But she was more than a volunteer, though. She had some really – some jobs with some real gravity. Like she was an investigator of sexual assault of black women by white men, which is a very dangerous thing to do because you're going to, like –

interview witnesses to crimes that aren't being prosecuted because they were perpetrated by white people. She was a justice for prisoner advocate. She did a lot of like

really important stuff and as she was doing this stuff as the secretary for the local nw naacp she was also making contacts that would later become really important in this nascent civil rights movement that largely grew out of the montgomery bus boycott we're going to talk about i had no idea how big of an event it was i knew it was big but i didn't realize like

How far reaching the effects of it were. Oh, yeah. And this another kind of important thing happened to her as far as integration goes is she got a job type job at Maxwell Air Force Base for a little while, which because it was a federal institution, was integrated. And this was the first time that she had integrated.

First time she had worked in – or basically been in a professional integrated atmosphere. Right. And that along with the Highlander Folk School, which is – maybe we should do a show on that too. In 1955, she went to a meeting, a workshop at the Highlander Folk School, and this is in the hills of Tennessee. And it is still open today as the Highlander Research and Education Center, not in that original building, but –

It was just this great folk school where they prepared kids for activism. Workers tried to get people involved in civil rights. And she actually got sponsored by the white couple that she worked for to go to these meetings at Mont Eagle, Tennessee. So and that Maxwell Air Force Base, you mentioned one of the things she later said, I think they found in her papers was a description of like.

Because it was an integrated base, the bus service on base was integrated as well. So she would be riding next to like a white friend on the bus on base. And then once they would get off of the bus on base and get onto a city bus, they would have to stop their conversation and get into the different sections, the white section and the colored section. And that was just the reality of it. And one thing that has really come through from her papers is that she –

made a conscious decision to never normalize that, to not be like, well, that's just how it is. That's just life. She would never let herself do that. Instead it was, this is messed up. This has to be changed. She was able to get through her day well.

With this knowledge, but she was never like, this is normal or this is okay. Yeah, I mean, she said it required, I think the quote was, a lot of mental gymnastics just to survive day to day as a black person in America. Right. So, in other words, yeah, not accept it and do everything I can to wrap my head around what I can do moving forward. Right. Should we take a break? Yeah, man, I think so. All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back and we will start on December 1st, 1955. Very important day. Thank you.

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Rosa Parks is working as a seamstress at the time at a department store. She gets off work like she does every day and boards bus 2857, Cleveland Avenue bus at about 6 o'clock. And here's the deal with the buses at the time is there were a certain amount of rows set aside for white people.

And then there was a sign that said, you know, black people or they probably said colored people back then can sit from here back. But that sign could move. So as more white people get on the bus, the bus driver gets up and moves that sign back and says, all right, black folks, you got to get up, get out of your seats, because now the white section is here and just keep doing that until –

ostensibly the entire bus could be full of white people and they just say, sorry, you all have to get off. Right. Yeah. You either had to get up and move your seat. If there were not seats left, you had to stand. If there was no standing room, you had to get off the bus. Right. And then if the bus you were getting on, if you were African-American, if the white section was already full,

you had to get into the front of the bus, pay, get off of the bus, and get onto that back door. You couldn't even walk through the white section. Right. And then you could take your seat in the colored section. So there was a lot going on here. At least half of this law was unwritten custom, right? Right. The local ordinance in Montgomery, Alabama, said that buses had to be segregated. There was a white section and there was a colored section, they put it, right? Right.

All that stuff about moving the sign, about getting up and like having to leave the bus if there wasn't any standing room for you, if more white people came on. Yeah. All of that was just customary. That was not law. That was not the local ordinance. But it was so practiced on a daily basis that it might as well have been the law. For sure. And that's really all that matters is if everyone was playing ball.

That's what was going to happen. Yeah, because the courts would even prosecute as if you had broken the law. Right. If you had not actually broken the law, but had broken this custom. So, yeah, for all intents and purposes, it was the law. So the driver of that bus was one James Blake. And Rosa had, well, she had a long memory and a previous incident with Mr. Blake 12 years previous.

In 1943, she had paid her fare. And like you were talking about with the fact that they couldn't even walk through the white section, he said, you got to get off the bus, go around to the back, find

And forced her – well, she had already gotten on and said, no, you got to reenter on the rear. She got out and he was like, psych, closed the door and drove off with her bus fare. Right, yeah. She had already paid. Yeah. That was the 1943 incident, right? And she remembered 12 years later who James Blake was. I would probably not forget that bus driver year. Of course not.

So on this day, she got on and she took her seat in the colored section. And when she sat down again, she was behind the sign. And I guess after a couple of stops and think about this, man, imagine riding the bus and

Let's say you have like seven stops. Think about that pit that would be in your stomach on a daily basis. Like am I going to have to get up? Right. Am I going to have to be humiliated? Am I going to have to give up my seat to a white person? Because even if somebody who was told that they had to get up because a white person needed to sit there, even if they just kind of quietly complied, that doesn't get the point across how they were feeling right then. Right.

Anybody would be humiliated by that. And I read that one of the reasons why buses, not just in Montgomery, but throughout the segregated South, they were kind of flashpoints because they were people were in such close quarters. It was the racism was right up in your face in front of a bunch of other people. So the humiliation was even more pronounced. Right. So so Rosa Parks gets on the bus. She takes her seat in the colored section. And after a few stops, she's.

Some white people got on and the driver, James Blake, said that it was time for them to move, that these white people needed a seat. And he was moving the sign back at least one row.

Yeah, so at this point, there's one white dude left without a seat. So as is custom, he made four black folks get out of their two seats on that row. Everyone had to move back because there had to be a whole new white row just for this one guy. Three of the passengers got up and moved. Rosa Parks just slid over to the window seat.

And sat there and he said are you gonna get up and she said no I'm not he said well if you don't stand up I'm gonna have to call the police and have you arrested and she said you may do that I Know man, I mean just so brave and so the police did come she was arrested. She was booked charged with disorderly conduct

and bailed out by Clifford Durr and Edgar Nixon, who were the local president of the chapter of the NAACP at the time. Right. So she's out, at least temporarily. Yeah, the next evening. So she spent the night in jail. I didn't run across any statements or any kind of evidence that she was physically mistreated or verbally abused by the police.

But that seems to be unusual for people who were arrested for not giving up their seats on the bus. What, that she was not mistreated? Right. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they didn't throw out the welcome mat. No. You know? No, but this is actually noteworthy here. Do you want to talk about how she was not the first person that year to get arrested?

Not the first woman to have been arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus? Yeah, sure. This is something I didn't realize, and I think a lot of people didn't realize this, but there were at least two other women in Montgomery who were arrested that same year. One was Claudette Colvin. She was 15 at the time. Yeah, wasn't she pregnant too? She got pregnant afterward. Oh, okay. But she was 15 and –

She, in March, was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus. She said at the time she was scared to death, but she felt on one side Sojourner Truth was holding her down and on the other side Harriet Tubman was holding her down and she was not about to get up. So they took her off the bus and arrested her. And apparently she was ridiculed and treated rather roughly there.

Um, there was another woman. Her name was Mary Louise Smith. I believe she was 18 at the time. She had been arrested like, uh, in October, um, for the same thing. I didn't get the impression that she was necessarily treated roughly. Yeah. But, um...

But Rosa Parks, when she was arrested, from what I can tell, she was treated like the – with the respect that would be afforded to a middle-class black woman at the time in Montgomery, Alabama, which is to say with maybe the slightest measure of respect, which is to say she wasn't beaten on the way to jail. There's a book, by the way, called Claudette Colvin, twice toward justice from Phil, who's –

or Hoos. And I think a lot of people these days are trying to shine a little light on some of the lesser known figures of the civil rights movement and books are being written and stuff like that, which is pretty awesome. And she was asked, Claudette Colvin was asked, like, why does she think

It was Rosa Parks and not her. And she had a whole list of reasons, and all of them are pretty legitimate, that Rosa Parks was a very, again, a palatable person to a large swath of people. And more to the point, she was also 15, and the NAACP didn't think that a 15-year-old was going to be the most reliable icon to kind of project into the national forefront. Yeah, not to say that a lot of people have said over the years that it was staged or

So because they set Rosa Parks up, or not set her up, but they picked her to do this because she was palatable. They staged this whole thing to make, which, you know, would have been fine if that's the way you want to kickstart the bus boycott. But from all accounts, it was a in-the-moment decision. She said, I didn't know that I was going to get arrested and I was going to sit down. It's just something that happened. And so on the one hand, the people who say that, no, this was staged –

The NAACP and even before the NAACP was around, buses had been like a target of black activists in Montgomery in particular for decades. I think the first bus boycott was in 1900 and it wasn't even a bus. It was a trolley line as well as boycotted.

So she – and having already been the secretary of the NAACP and an activist herself for years by then, she must have been fully aware of the potential outcome. Yeah. Which proved to be the actual outcome from her arrest for not giving up her seat. But the idea of saying that this was all staged, it does a couple of things. It's almost like –

a casually racist way of just kind of diminishing it because it does two things. One, it takes away her bravery because if it was staged, she had support the whole time. It would have taken away a measure of fear. And then secondly, it also makes the NAACP look kind of sneaky, like they're socially engineering stuff and then pretending like that's not the case. Yeah.

So I think by saying like, no, this was staged, it really undermines the reality of the situation, which is that this brave woman said she'd had enough. Yeah. And you're right. She probably it probably occurred to her the ramifications of this. But surely I bet you anything in the moment. She was just like, nope, no, not getting up. That's what I understand. That's what she's always said. Yeah. So here's what happened from there.

She was arrested, like I said. She gets out on bail. Over that weekend, a bunch of churches got together and they started talking boycott when her trial comes around. There's a group called the Women's Political Council, and they handed out 35,000 handbills that basically said, please, children, grownups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off the buses on Monday. Let's really try and make a difference here because –

It was, I think at the time, black people made up 75% of the passengers. Yeah. So it could have a real impact on like the finances of the bus company. Yeah. And it just started out as a boycott for one day, for the Monday following Rosa Parks' arrest, which happened on a Thursday. And they were just going to do it for one day. But the success of it was so great.

surprising. I think they were hoping for like 50% reduction. It turned out, I saw both 90 and 99% reduction in ridership by African Americans that day. Right. And if they make up 75%... That's a big loss. Yeah. For the city bus line, right? For sure. So it was such a success that they said, well, let's maybe let's keep this going and see what we can do with this. Because initially the demands of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 were

was that one of them was black riders be treated with courtesy. Yeah. Pretty low-hanging request. Another one was that the

the seats be given on a first-come, first-served basis, which was the law, and that black people sit from back to front, white people sit from front to back. So they were still saying, like, we can keep the segregation, but people shouldn't have to give up their seats. And then the last one was they wanted black bus drivers to be hired to drive the predominantly African-American routes so that you didn't have to deal with

James Blake. Yeah, an armed white bus driver because they were armed and they had basically police powers to enforce segregation on the bus. So the original boycott thing, their demands were not –

extraordinarily radical and when the boycott was a success on that first Monday they decided to extend it and they also decided maybe they should expand their demands a little more so while all this is going on she was she was found guilty on that Monday she was fined ten bucks plus court costs of four dollars for fourteen dollars total and said nope I'm going to appeal this conviction she challenged that basically

What she was challenging was segregation in general, not being constitutional. Right. And that ended up being the argument that was – well, we'll get to the court case and how it escalated. But she was found guilty, and the other notable thing that happened was –

One, Ralph David Abernathy and Dr. Martin Luther King, who was a young minister in town of Dexter Avenue Baptist. He was elected president of what was called the MIA, the Montgomery Improvement Association, which they formed because of the success of the boycott. So you have this new organization. Then about a month later, a month and a half at the end of January, Martin Luther King's home was bombed.

Everyone was unharmed in the incident, but it really ramped up the stakes of what was going on. Yeah, well, for sure. And apparently the Montgomery Improvement Association is credited with making the boycott successful. And the way that they made it successful was through a carpool they set up. They bought a bunch of station wagons and put them in the name of some of the black churches in town. And these...

Station wagons would basically recreate the bus routes. They drove predetermined routes. And they were giving like 20,000 people a ride every day. That's how successful this was. And they put such a crimp

in the finances of the city bus line that a couple of things happened. One, they had to lay off workers, close down lines, raise their fares. Like it really hurt the city bus lines.

And then secondly, the city and I believe maybe even the state sued the Montgomery Improvement Association for for this boycott, which is apparently illegal under a 1921 Alabama law. Yeah, they sued against the car service specifically.

saying that the bus company had an exclusive franchise. Right. And they did get an injunction in November of 1956. But all of this comes out of the fact that in like 30-something years earlier, in 1921, Alabama passed an anti-boycott act. Right. Which basically said that it's illegal for you to not ride the bus in this case. In that case, sure.

Or at least organize people and get them to not ride the bus. Yeah. It was something like it was a misdemeanor to organize against somebody carrying out lawful business or whatever. So they were getting them on two things, that boycott and then infringing on the bus lines franchise in that city, right? Right. So what do you do if you are suing – or I'm sorry, if you have an anti-boycott act –

I mean, you can't arrest everyone. So they go after, I think, 89 Martin Luther King Jr. and 89 other other members of the MIA. And obviously, because they're the most I think how many of them, 24 or more ministers, they're the most prominent members. And he was fined 500 bucks and spent a couple of weeks in jail. Yeah. So he's very proud of his crime.

Yeah, sure. So now Martin Luther King is appealing. So you've got a few things going on here.

You've got Rosa Parks, who has been convicted and now is appealing her $10 plus $4 in court costs fine for breaking the city ordinance, even though she didn't. You've got Martin Luther King now, who is appealing his $500 fine for the boycott and the infringing on the Bus Lines franchise. And then you have something else. You have a class action suit.

called Browder v. Gale. It was named after, oh, what's her name? The woman who's the lead plaintiff in the case. Her name is Aurelia S. Browder. And the Gale in the case was the Montgomery mayor, I think William Gale. And we'll talk about that. Well, let's take a break and we'll talk about this case and we'll come back to the

The drumbeat of the court system starting to kick in.

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All right. So,

Appeals run slow anyway, but in the South, if it's a case like this, it's going to go super slow because the hope from the white establishment is, you know, maybe enough time will go by and these people just sort of get in line and forget about it, get tired of this boycott, and everything will just go back to normal. Yeah, which is kind of a gamble because this boycott was not showing any signs of cracking at all.

So they were basically making that bet on the back of the city bus line and on the jobs of the drivers who were being laid off because ridership was down so low. 381 days. 381 days, right. For the boycott. So like I said, this court, the drumbeat of the court system was starting to grow a little bit louder. And you had three big cases, Martin Luther King's case, Rosa Parks' case, and you had Browder versus Gayle.

And Browder v. Gale represented four women, originally five, but four women who had been convicted of breaking the law for not giving up their seat on the bus.

In Montgomery. One of them was Claudette Colvin. Another was Mary Louise Smith, I believe. And then Aurelia Browder. And then lastly was... Susie McDonald. Susie McDonald, right? So these four women got together and sued the mayor, the bus line, a few bus drivers, the city public works commission, just a big group of people. And they were suing

All three of those cases were suing to question the constitutionality and the legality of

Segregation in general. Yeah. But specifically on the bus lines. And there was a talk at first by Freddie Gray, who was the lead lawyer in Browder v. Gale, of including Rosa Parks. But he very, very wisely kept her separate from that case because he said he wanted the courts to just consider one thing, not whether Rosa Parks was guilty or not.

But whether the segregation on the Montgomery buses was legal and constitutional. So he kept those separate very smartly. Yeah, I think he knew that he could get this to the Supreme Court. Yeah.

This way. It was a test case. And that was his ultimate goal. Sure. Because it was a state statute, though, and the state constitution of Alabama, it was, of course, first brought before district court. Three judges in U.S. district court on June 5th, 1956. They ruled two to one that segregation was unconstitutional. Of course, they cited Brown versus Board of Education as precedent.

And it eventually wound its way to the Supreme Court in 1956 on December 17th. Actually, that was pretty quick. Yeah. Considering. Yeah. And they rejected all appeals and voted nine to nothing, nine to zero, that it was unconstitutional. Yep. Nine to nothing, which is I mean, that's really saying something. Unanimous Supreme Court decision regarding segregation. Yeah. In the 1950s. Yeah. So that's.

That was huge. I think Dr. King was in court that day when he was told by a reporter about that decision, the Supreme Court decision. And even after...

he said, we're keeping up the boycott. Because when they implement this desegregation on the buses, we'll stop the boycott. And after the Supreme Court ruling came through, the city of Montgomery saw pretty clearly that there wasn't any way to keep this up any longer. And I believe within three days, the buses were desegregated. And on the first day that they were desegregated, Rosa Parks took her seat on a bus in the front row, I believe.

Yeah, they hired black bus drivers. And this is after, by the way, 381 days of a total sales loss of 65 percent. So, yeah. And on the other side, Ralph David Abernathy's home was bombed. Martin Luther King's home was bombed. People were in jail. People were in court. It was a big struggle down in Montgomery. Yeah. So on December 21st, Dr. King died.

And his white friend, Reverend Glenn Smiley, sat together on the front row with Ralph David Abernathy, a street here in Atlanta. Yeah. Named for him. E.D. Dixon and Fred Gray, the attorney that saw that case. Right.

So that was a huge thing. It did a number of things. It made Rosa Parks an icon. Yeah. It projected Martin Luther King into the national spotlight. That was basically where he first found national fame and basically was like, well, this guy's the leader of the civil rights movement now.

And it also was a huge domino in the idea of desegregation in general, not just on buses, not just in Montgomery. But the concept, it followed in the wake of Plessy v. Ferguson, which was just one of those court cases that said,

Separate facilities is inherently racist because the only reason you would have separate facilities is because you think one group is superior over the other and they shouldn't have to consort or mix. That's inherently unconstitutional. This was one of those dominoes that fell in that chain that led to desegregation across the Jim Crow South and

Like a laser, this particular case and the changes it brought were focused right onto Rosa Parks. Her act, her courage, what she did. Yeah, and this was –

This was within our parents' lifetime. I know. I was wondering. I was like, why am I so much more jazzed about this than Harriet Tubman? I love Harriet Tubman's story. Yeah. But I remember when I was researching, I wasn't nearly as jazzed. And I realized, like, I can relate to this woman so much better just because this is pretty recent, you know? Well, yeah. And just the notion that where we are as a country now racially –

This was not that long ago. So for the people in the camp of saying just get over things, African-Americans, just get over things. It's like this was not hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Right. This was very recently. These like my peers, parents had to live through this. Well, one thing Rosa Parks is now known for what they didn't realize before is, you know, she her act in like the civil rights movement that grew out of like the next 10 years.

15 years there's this idea that around 1970 there was a button put on that and it was like you guys were successful way to go we can stop doing this now rosa parks is like no no it's not done this hasn't changed up until she died in 2005 she was like the struggle's still continuing yeah people didn't realize that about her until this collection was opened yeah she um this all came uh

There was significant cost to her family, to her, her husband. Her and her husband both suffered through stomach ulcers. Because of this, they lost their jobs. Eventually, they left Alabama, said, let's go to Virginia. And Virginia wasn't a whole lot better. They said, all right, let's go to Detroit. Kept going north.

And then finally, after not having a job for a long time, she was hired as secretary for John Conyers, a brand new brand, newly elected black congressman who she would work for for 23 years. And Mr. Conyers, you know, he was the one who stepped down last year after sexual assault allegations after serving many, many years in Congress.

And was a civil rights icon. So it's kind of a very sad ending to that story. Yeah. But Rosa worked for him in 77. Her husband, James, died of cancer. Her brother died of cancer three months later. Her mom died two years after that. But I get the sense that after that, it really.

It really kind of freed her to really go back to work and devote herself once again to the cause. Because after those family members passed away, she established the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development and wrote two memoirs. Yeah. She was busy. She was. And then very sadly, I know I remember this in 1994, she.

When she was home invaded and robbed and hit over the head. By a guy named Joseph Skipper. Yeah, man. That was just like, I mean, are you kidding me with that? For 58 bucks. Of all the houses to accidentally break into? Yeah. What do you think he knew? It was Rosa Parks? I don't know. I don't know, but he... I've seen nothing to indicate that that was true. He knew that...

He would go down as the man who robbed and beat Rosa Parks. Oh, well, yeah. So, yeah, I don't think she was targeted because she was Rosa Parks or anything like that. I think she's just a little old lady.

The impression I have is it doesn't matter if she was Rosa Parks or not. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So that was 94, you said? Mm-hmm. And then right afterward, there was a huge national outcry, and she moved into a very secure high-rise in Detroit, where she lived until she died in 2005, I believe. She died in that apartment. 92 years young. She had a slew of honors there.

unprecedented honors in this country. She was transported her body to Washington, D.C., and she laid an honor under the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. First woman to get that honor, the second African-American, and the first non-government

American ever to have this honor. Yep. I mean that is a high honor Yeah when she died every flag on public land in the United States and around the world Was flown at half mast which is pretty pretty great - yeah George W Bush made sure that happened And then here's just some of her lifetime achievement awards. I

N.A.C.P. gave her what's called the Spingarn Medal in 1979, their highest honor. She's in the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Martin Luther King Jr. Award, 1980.

You could have just stopped at the Michigan Hall of Fame. Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Yeah. The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. Yeah, still. Congressional Gold. Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Congressional Gold Medal? No? Now we're in a contest. Time Magazine named her as one of the 20 most influential and iconic figures of the 20th century. It's a big one. Okay.

And then, yeah, he mentioned George W. Bush ordered half-mast flags in 2005. So, again, there was this idea that she was just a tired little old lady who was quietly brave and didn't give up her seat and she was kind of meek and quiet. And in 2014, her personal collection, the Rosa Parks collection, was sold to the Howard Buffett Foundation, Warren Buffett's son,

They bought it for a song at like $4.5 million. And it's something like, I think, 6,500 documents and 2,500 photographs. And it is her personal papers, like notes for speeches, notes for her books, I believe, correspondence. And it paints this picture that no one had of her before, which was, no, like this lady was an activist through and through her whole life. She was an activist who...

wanted to talk about and agitate for the rights of black Americans and how messed up the situation was that they lived in and that she wouldn't normalize this. She would learn to deal with it as much as she needed to while she was working to change it. And there was a surprise to a lot of people when they cracked open these papers and found that –

Picture of her. Yeah. Also want to shout out article how history got the Rosa Parks story wrong. And this was written by the same person who wrote the award winning book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Her name is Jean Theo Harris.

Theoharis. It's all one word. Yeah, I know. It sounds like it should be hyphenated. It's really easy to say, but how do you say it? I have no idea. I know. But she's Professor of Poli Sci at Brooklyn College of CUNY. Yep. Man. Great lady. Yep.

So if you want to know more about Rosa Parks, go out on the Internet. Educate yourself. I still haven't seen that movie. Have you seen that? No. About the bus boycott? No. I mean, it was a significant event. I had no idea. Okay. Well, I think I said go search stuff in there somewhere. So that means it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this, oh, Tiny Things. All right. Hey, guys. Let me start off by saying I enjoyed the podcast very much. Fine. Aside from being interesting and entertaining, it very much helps my time in the car. We get that a lot. Sure. Commute helped. People would go insane if it weren't for us. Several episodes ago, I believe Chuck mentioned that you love tiny things. I do. Josh likes things that are grossly oversized. Yeah.

that giant pocket watch over there. It's kind of a pain. I'm wearing it like play of a fight. Uh, he mentioned loving tiny things. There's something extraordinarily satisfying about them. I agree. I love tiny things would be remiss if I did not bring, um, bring you to the museum of Jurassic technology.

I love that place. I know. I've been there, too. It's in Los Angeles. There are not one but two fantastic exhibits of tiny things. The Eye of the Needle and Micro Mosaics. I don't think I saw those. Did you? The tiny thing I remember was like the dioramas of the trailers. Yes.

And the Eye of the Needle, I remember that. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I don't remember the micro mosaics, though. I haven't been in many years, though. Yeah, same here. Eye of the Needle features delightful, whimsical miniature sculptures actually small enough to fit into the Eye of the Needle. Oh, well, there you go. That's a little too small for me. Okay, so you like... I like the tiny Tabasco bottles that you get in New Jersey. You like to feel like you're a giant, not like a god. Yeah. Gotcha. Exactly. I just want to be taller.

Yeah. That's not too creepy. Well, I mean... Did they kill the butterflies? Depends, yeah. How did they come across those wings? Were they rogue kill? If so, that's fine. Yeah. What a job. Go out and just try and find dead butterflies. Yeah.

All in all, these exhibits have a wonderful feel of magic realism. The museum also features a lovely rooftop garden as well as a meditative tea room to enjoy a complimentary cup of tea. Interesting. That is all, guys. Cheers from Sandra Williams. Thanks a lot for the shout-out, Sandra. That is indeed a great place. If you're ever in Los Angeles, everybody, go check out the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Just go in with your mind open and thank us later. Yeah, get out of Ripley's Believe It or Not. We'll go to both. You know? Sure. I say get out of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Okay. Yeah, but I mean, Jack Palance, man. How do you pass that down? I don't get it. Remember, he was the host of the TV show. Oh, was he? Believe It.

Or not. Yeah, my brother worked with him on City Slickers 2. Gotcha. And there was one story where, you know, he's kind of old at the time, where Scott, as the AD, is to walk him. Second AD is to walk the talent to the set from their trailer. And it was through the desert, the rocky desert, and Scott was like, you know, look out for that rock, Mr. Pallance, or something like that. And one day he was just like, I don't need you to tell me how to walk! And Scott, like...

Shrank down, of course. I can't remember if that's exactly what he said. But I'll bet Jack Palance felt so bad for yelling at Scott, of all people. I doubt it. You know, it's Scott. He didn't delight in Scott like everyone else does. He's Jack Palance. Yeah. Well, if you want to tell us how great you think Scott is, you can send us all an email, including Jerry, to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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