Document Deep Dive: Rosa Parks’ Arrest Records
Read between the lines of the police report drawn up when the seamstress refused to give up her seat 57 years ago
- By Megan Gambino
- Smithsonian.com, November 28, 2012, Subscribe
William Pretzer was five years old when Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested. It was December 1, 1955. The 42-year-old seamstress was on a city bus, en route home after a day’s work, and she refused to give her seat to a white passenger.
The full import of the event did not register with Pretzer, so young and living more than 2,000 miles away in Sacramento, California. To be honest, it would take time for most people to gain enough perspective to see the protest for what it was, the beginning of the civil rights movement in the United States, and Parks as the movement’s so-called “mother.”
Even now, as he looks over Parks’ police report and fingerprints, Pretzer, a senior curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, is struck by the banality of the documents. “There is nothing that makes this event look extraordinary,” he says. “It is being treated as a typical misdemeanor violation of the city code. In fact, that is exactly what it was.”
Yet, while police dealt with the situation just like any other altercation on the city’s segregated buses, Parks, her attorneys and NAACP leaders organized. “Within the African American community, it is seen as an opportunity for progress to be made, for attention and pressure to be brought to bear on the white power structure,” says Pretzer.
Parks’ act of defiance inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, through which Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a civil rights leader. The boycott lasted 381 days, and on the 382nd day, backed by a Supreme Court ruling, the city’s buses were officially integrated.
By Pretzer’s definition, Parks is a history maker. “History makers are those that sense the moment,” he says.
Pretzer studied Parks’ story in detail in the early 2000s, when he helped Detroit’s Henry Ford Museum, where he worked for more than 20 years, acquire the retired GM bus in which the incident occurred. Based on a conversation with Pretzer and information conveyed in Parks’ 1992 autobiography Rosa Parks: My Story, I have annotated Parks’ police report, fingerprint card and a diagram of the bus—all held at the National Archives at Atlanta in Morrow, Georgia.
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Comments (4)
"sandy" is correct. I too was wondering why there are still pieces being written as if Rosa Parks actions that day hadn't been part of a well-organized plan.
Posted by pov on February 21,2013 | 10:24 AM
I admire Rosa but wonder why no one ever talks about the NAACP meeting that decided to "force the issue" by having someone arrested to give a reason for a boycott. Rosa's husband was a member and she volunteered. At the time she said she volunteered because she had no children and could afford to be in jail if needed. A brave act, yes...but not spontaneous. Continuing to call it such removes the respect due to all the other people who worked to make the boycott a reality and a place to begin a movement.
Posted by sandy on January 22,2013 | 11:21 AM
Outstanding piece of historic empirical material, held in the archives of this nation's most precious repository...The Smithsonian Institute..
Posted by Kem Royale on December 10,2012 | 02:09 AM
Just want always just to say thank you ' for all the wonderful info I get through Smithsonion ---eager to learn FROM YOU ------ Jane Hessin silver Lake Ohio --
Posted by Jane Hessin on December 3,2012 | 11:39 AM