Rosa's Bus Incident

December 1st, 1955 as Rosa rode the bus home from her job at the Montgomery Fair Department Store. Rosa boarded the bus, paid her fare, and sat down in the first row behind the seats reserved for the whites. This was in the eleventh row and almost in the middle of the bus. Coincidentally, the same bus driver who had thrown her off of the bus 13 years earlier (James F. Blake) was driving the bus that day. The bus made its way along its route and the seats reserved for whites only began to fill up. When all of the seats were full, and there were still three whites standing the bus driver moved toward the back of the bus and demanded that four black people relinquish their seats to the white people. One crucial and often misinterpereted fact about this incident is that Mrs.Parks was in fact sitting in the first row of the section reserved for blacks.
In her autobiography, Rosa told how, when the driver was issuing his demands, she just wanted to protect herself and her rights. The three black men near her moved, but Rosa just scooted over towards the window seat. The bus driver then asked her why she did not get up and move and she told him that she did not feel that she should have to.
In her autobiography, Parks wrote, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. I knew someone had to take the first step and I made up my mind not to move. Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it."