'53 bus takes trip in memory of Parks

It was a short, but thought-provoking ride.

At 2 p.m. on Thursday, about a dozen people boarded a bus in downtown Salt Lake City and took a ride down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (600 South). The bus was from 1953 and the riders were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Conference of Minority Transportation Offi- cials.

Most sat in silence, but Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP Salt Lake Branch, spoke to some about a civil-rights movement that began 50 years ago on a bus. On Dec. 1, 1955, a diminutive black seamstress, Rosa Parks, refused to give her seat on a bus to a white man.

Thursday was the 50th anniversary of that protest — an action that led to a 381-day boycott of public bus service in Montgomery, Ala. Across the nation, hundreds of transit agencies joined in tribute to Parks and the civil-rights movement she sparked.

Thursday's ride on the vintage bus was a tribute from the Utah Transit Authority. The bus, decorated with photos and written vignettes about Parks, would have been similar to the bus she rode in 1955.

"This is a very humbling day for all of us," said Williams, who is also a UTA employee. "It's a day where we look back and reflect on where we've come. People don't get on TRAX and the bus now and worry where they sit."

Because she refused to give up her seat, located in the "colored" section of the bus, Parks was fined and arrested. Her arrest, however, helped lead to a 1956 Supreme Court ruling that said segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.

"It all started with Rosa Parks," said UTA spokesman Justin Jones.

Added Williams: "It took that person to do it that day. It was the right day at the right time. We may not have made progress without Parks."

On Oct. 25, Parks died at age 92. In a tribute usually reserved for American presidents, her casket was laid in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Parks was the first woman in the United States to lie in state.

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E-mail: nwarburton@desnews.com