BUS RIDE TO JUSTICE, EXCERPT..

BUS RIDE TO JUSTICE: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF FRED D. GRAY, CHANGING THE SYSTEM BY THE SYSTEM, by Fred D. Gray, Esq., (NewSouth Books, Montgomery, AL: 1995, 2013), P.31-33 “During the early months of my law practice, I had few clients and little to do. At lunchtime Mrs. [Rosa] Parks often walked to my law office, located one and a half blocks from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. We became very good friends. She would walk to my office and we would sit down and share our lunches. “For almost a year we met, shared our lunches, and discussed the problems in Montgomery. Among all those problems, the segregation on city buses was an especial affront to Montgomery's black citizens. Few blacks had cars in those days. We relied on buses. It seemed that the white operators of the buses went out of their way to humiliate black passengers, despite the fact that the bus company derived the majority of its income from black riders. “In the months before her own arrest, Mrs. Parks and I talked often about the situation involving Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old student at Booker Washington High School, who was arrested March 2, 1955, for refusing to get up and give her seat to a white woman on a Capitol Heights bus in downtown Montgomery. I represented Claudette Colvin in the juvenile court of Montgomery County. We discussed the possibility of a boycott. I told Mrs. Parks, as I had told other leaders in Montgomery, that I thought the Claudette Colvin arrest was a good test case to end segregation on the buses. However, the black leadership in Montgomery at that time thought we should wait. “When we threatened to stay off the buses, the city and bus company officials assured us that what happened to Claudette Colvin would not happen again. Of course, nothing really changed. Claudette, Mary Louise Smith, and Mrs. Parks were among a number of black females who had been arrested under almost the same circumstances for resisting segregation practices on the city buses during the year 1955.... “December 1, 1955, was a typical day in Montgomery. It was late fall, but it had not begun to get cold. Mrs. Parks and I had lunch together that day, just as we had done many times before. When 1 p.m. Came and the lunch hour ended, Mrs. Parks went back to her work as a seamstress. During our lunch, I informed Mrs. Parks that I had an appointment out of town that afternoon. I continued my work and left the office in the early afternoon for an out-of-town engagement. “Upon my return to the city later that evening, I was shocked to learn that Mrs. Parks had been arrested in an incident involving the buses. I immediately began to return the numerous phone calls informing me of her arrest. Subsequently, I met with Mrs. Parks, E.D. Nixon, and Jo Ann Robinson. “That day was, for me, the beginning point of all the monumental events that soon began to unfold in my life. My immediate little world began to change. And so did the larger world. I pledged to myself that I would wage war on segregation. The opening shot had now been fired. With Mrs. Park's arrest came the opening of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It changed the history of civil rights in Alabama, in the nation, and in the world. And it launched my legal career.”