It was a direct.
It was very important that people know that.
She was daydreaming.
I used to tease Mrs Parks because like all Black women
and she thinks that she fries the best chicken,
and she thinks she makes the best meatloaf.
And she would say that, Raymond loved my meatloaf.
And I'd say, well, Mrs Parks that's
because he didn't have mine.
[LAUGHTER]
And she were like, no, baby, mine is better.
So I have her daydreaming about the meal
she's going to cook for Raymond because he's been working late.
And you can fry chicken quickly, but you can't make a meal.
It takes a minute.
So she's daydreaming about making
a meatloaf when this man comes on hollers at her.
I have him bellowing, I said give me those seats.
But Mrs. Parks had no startle.
I don't know what it is about the water in Montgomery,
neither did Martin Luther King.
And if you recall, when King was stabbed in Harlem,
he didn't jump like most of us would do.
Somebody stabs you, you know.
But he sat there, oh, I have been stabbed.
It saved his life because had he sneezed, that knife would
have moved and cut his heart.
Mrs. Parks had no startle either.
And so she just looked up and said, why do you pick on us?
And he said, it's the law.
Give me the seats.
Well, she was, as you know, on the the aisle.
We know that there was a man on the window.
The bus was only 36 seats.
It was a small bus.
And we know that there were two people on the other side.
They decided-- and I have no fault with them,
they decided to give up those seats.
They didn't want to be bothered.
Mrs. Parks got up to let him out.
And when he did, James Tate thought that it was over.
He goes back to drive the bus.
And when he looked up in his mirror, she was sitting there.
And he said, I'm going to have you arrested, and she said,
you may do that.
So now the bus is stuck, and of course, the bus
divided, not by race really but by how
people looked at justice.
Some of the white people said she
had a right to be there because she was in the neutral section.
Some of the Black people said she
ought to move because it's going to cause a lot of problems
for everybody.
It was no one way or the other, but nonetheless, she
was going to wait.
If Bryan Collier were here, he would
say, because it fascinated Bryan, the bus driver.
He said, but, Nikki, the bus driver had,
and it's true, a billy club.
He did.
And the bus driver had a gun, and he did.
But something made him have to call for backup.
A little 42-year-old woman and he had to call somebody
to get her off the bus because he couldn't handle it
by himself.
This is Claudette Colvin, and she
had been arrested nine months earlier for the same thing,
for refusing to get up her seat, but she had pled guilty.
And when she pled guilty, it was a $25 fine.
She paid it and that was the end.
We needed somebody who was going to plead not guilty
and be found guilty so that we could then
take it to the courts.
We could work its way up.
And so this is going to take a lot of courage.
Bryan wanted to show her hands because she's just
very calm with this.
This is Dr. Jo Ann Robinson who is just the newly elected head
of the Women's Political Caucus, because we forget
that the Montgomery bus boycott largely
was the groundwork of women.
You have to give women credit for doing that.
And she's in Piggly Wiggly fixing her dinner,
because I have all the women in domestic situations.
She bought dinner, she went home and fixed it.
She fed her two sons and her husband, washed the dishes,
dried them, put her two boys to bed, and at 10
o'clock that night, went out to Alabama State, and ran off.
Used Alabama State's paper and ran off flyers.
They ran off 35,000 flyers.
So they ran off pretty much all night.
About 4 o'clock in the morning, they called their husbands.
I know some people say, well, why didn't the husbands go out?
Because it's still Alabama, and if somebody
had gone by and seen a whole bunch of Black men,
that there's going to be bloodshed.
And so the women were betting that if somebody just
saw a whole bunch of women, they might let it go.
And it was a good bet.
But the men came and got the flyers.
You also have read, of course, that the bus
boycott, the ministers announced it in church
and that's what made it happen.
But I know that you know that not everybody goes to church.
If you want something to happen, you
got to go to the juke joints.
You do, because that's the people that ride the bus.
The ministers have cars.
They live in detached housing.
I mean, come on.
And so that's what we're going to have.
The women are going to do that.
And, of course, this is Johnnie Mae Carr.
And one of the great privileges in my life and anybody
was to watch Rosa Parks and Johnnie Mae.
As I said, she didn't let her hair down with me.
Not that she was unrelaxed, it's just I was not
that kind of friend, but Johnnie Mae Carr
was that kind of friend.
And to sit with the two of them sometimes because they always--
older people talk about death, and Johnnie Mae
would say, well, Rosa, you better
get ready to eulogize me.
You're going to have to be doing that.
And she would say, no, no, Johnnie,
you have to eulogize me.
I'm not going to live.
And Johnnie would say, no.
And so there was some back and forth.
And one of the really more difficult things for me
personally was in Detroit, it was Johnnie Mae Carr
who had to eulogize Rosa Parks because Mrs. Carr is older
and never thought that would happen.
But as you can see, Bryan, she's the only person
in this book in real time because Bryan fell in love.
When Bryan went down to Montgomery finally,
he met Mrs. Carr and she hugged him.
And Bryan is a football player.
He's a former linesman.
And so he's a big guy.
And of course, you know Southern Black women love big men.
And she was like, well, come on in, baby.
Let me fix you something to eat.
And of course, Bryan is always hungry.
So he's sitting there, eating her food.
And she fell in love with him.
It's like, oh, what a nice young man.
He's eating my food.
So Bryan should be ashamed.
Of course, that Monday, we are going
to meet Martin Luther King.
But again, Bryan did not want you to see King
because it wasn't important.
What he thought was important was
to look over King's shoulders so that we
could, in fact, see the people.
And the people are going to March.
And we've got this lovely--
the people are going to march 381 days.
And a lot of good came out of the marching.
Not only did we fight segregation,
but we forget, by walking, the people improved their health.
They lost weight.
They did.
Cholesterol went down.
Domestic violence went to 0 because instead
of being mad at their wives and children
they were involved in something righteous.
This was a good thing, the march.
And of course, the Supreme Court did rule absolutely
that the 14th Amendment applied to Black Americans
and that we should have equal rights under the law.
And of course, what we had in our book is the children
are thanking Rosa Parks.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]