TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Dec 1, 2020

Sixty five years ago, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, igniting the civil rights movement and the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott. The 42-year-old seamstress from Tuskegee was charged with “ignoring a bus driver who directed her to sit in the rear of the bus” under Jim Crow laws on Dec. 1, 1955. Parks made a five-minute court appearance, represented by attorneys Fred Gray and Charles Langford, where she was fined $14 for violating state segregation law. The arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, intended to last for only a day, but instead lasting for more than a year until the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation on city buses. Read the full story on Parks’ legacy from the Tennessean.