A Call to Conscience
Chapter One
ADDRESS TO THE FIRST MONTGOMERY
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION (MIA) MASS MEETING
INTRODUCTION BY ROSA LOUISE PARKS
December 5, 1955, was one of the memorable and inspiring days of my
life. History records this day as the beginning of the modern Civil
Rights Movement that transformed America and influenced freedom
revolutions around the world.
I had been arrested four days earlier, on December 1, in my hometown
of Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to get up and give my seat on a
city bus to a white man, which was a much-resented customary
practice at the time. Local black community leaders, the Reverend E.
D. Nixon and attorney Fred Gray, asked me if I would be willing to
make a test case out of my arrest, with the goal of ending
segregation on Montgomery's buses, and I agreed to cooperate with
them.
Mrs. Joanne Robinson and other local black women leaders of the
Women's Political Council of our community met on the evening of my
arrest and decided to call a boycott to begin on December 5, the day
of my trial. I was found g ... read full excerpt from: A Call to Conscience ebook
