2018 California Rosa Parks Day

Click here for more information on Rosa Parks Day at the California State Capitol:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rosa-parks-day-at-the-california-state-capitol-tickets-41891673122

California State Capitol ~ West Steps, 1315 10th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
Monday, February 5, 2018 @ 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM PST

"Are you ready?” Attorney Fred Gray asked.

"Without hesitation, I assured him that we were," Jo Ann Gibson Robinson responded.

The news of Rosa Parks arrest traveled like wildfire into every home. Everyone seemed to wait for someone to do something, but nobody made a move, except the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama.

Thursday evening, December 1, 1955, at about 11:30 p.m. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson informed Fred Gray, an attorney and former student, that she was thinking that the Women's Political Council (WPC) should distribute thousands of notices calling for all bus riders to stay off the buses on Monday, December 5, 1955, the day of Mrs. Parks’ trial.

Very late Thursday, Jo Ann Robinson called John Cannon and informed him that the WPC was staging a boycott and needed to run off the notices. He told her that he too had suffered embarrassment on the Montgomery City Lines. Jo Ann, along with two of her most trusted senior students, met John in the middle of the night, at the college’s duplicating room.

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, an English professor at Alabama State College, had been president of the WPC since 1950. Under Robinson’s leadership, the WPC intensified their focus on bus reform. Members of the organization met several times with city officials throughout 1954 and 1955 in an effort to achieve better bus service.

They had been considering a boycott of the Montgomery City Lines for years at the time of Rosa Parks’ arrest. Therefore, some of the WPC officers discussed how and where to deliver thousands of leaflets announcing a boycott, and those plans now stood them in good stead.

Between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. they outlined their routes and took out the W.P.C membership roster and called Dr. Mary Fair Burks, founding and former W.P.C President, Mrs. Mary Cross, Mrs. Elizabeth Arrington, Mrs. Josie Lawrence, Mrs. Geraldine Nesbitt, Mrs. H. Council Trenholm, Mrs. Catherine N. Johnson, and a dozen more answered the called to action.

Over 35,000 leaflets were printed and dropped off at business places, storefronts, beauty parlors, beer halls, factories, barber shops, and every other available place.

Early Monday morning, December 5, 1955, mostly black women maids going to work in white houses, WALKED instead of riding the bus. The Political Women’s Council began to make arrangements for carpools and whatever transportation they could get together.

Workers would pass along notices both to other employees as well as to customers about the boycott. When Black Ministers saw that their congregations were on board for the boycott, the ministers got on board too, regardless of denomination.

The clergymen formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) on December 5, 1955 to help guide the Montgomery Bus Boycott as it was soon clear that the people were willing to carry the boycott beyond one day, indeed it went on for more than a year.

Ella Baker, Baynard Rustin and others would talk to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. about starting a broader movement that would fight for the rights of African Americans throughout the South, that guiding force, as conceived of by Baynard Rustin, would help turn the Montgomery Improvement Association into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.