The Daily Mail from Hagerstown, Maryland • Page 17

I DAILY MAIL, Haserstown, Md, August ir, Woman Whose Refusal To Give Up Her Bus SeatSparked Negro Protest Today Has No Regrets By A.F. MAHAN DETROIT (AP) In the rash of headlines over passage of (he Civil Rights Act, over deaths in Mississippi and riots in Harlem, over sit-ins and stall-ins and the white backlash, perhaps few people today, white or Negro, remember a December cve- And yet the American Negro may have traveled farther and faster that night in Alabama than he did on the long road up from slavery or on the short dramatic march down Pennsyl vania and Constilution Avenues in Washington, D.C., last summer. Even today, nine years later, the details of that evening are so lacking in drama and emotion content as to seem hardly the stuff of which history is wade. It was shortly after 5:30 p.m. and getting dark when seamstress Parks put aside a pile of new suits waiting alterations at her work bench in the Montgomery Fair department store and walked a weary half- block to the bus stop on Court Square.

She boarded the bus and took a seat about halfway down in the first seat behind the forward section reserved fwor white people. As was the prevailing custom and law at the time, Negroes yielded their seats and moved progressively toward the rear as more seats were needed to accommodate white patrons. Rosa Parks paid no attention that particular evening to the other passengers. The white section wasn't full yet and her thoughts were of home, 15 minutes away, where her husband, Raymond, a barber, was busy getting together dinner. The first stop brought an influx of passengers who dutifully sorted themselves out in the bus, the Negroes crowding into the cluster of standees at the rear and the whites filling in the last seats in the section marked reserved for them.

Rosa Park's thoughts were still miles from that crowded bus aisle when a white man came aboard at the next slop and stood behind the driver. The next thing she can remember is the heavy-set driver twisting around and addressing her and the other three Negroes in the first scats of the colored section: "Let me have those front seats." For a moment, no one moved. Maybe, like her, the others weren't listening too attentive)'. "You better make it light on yourselves and get up," the driver advised. Then two Negroes across the aisle retreated to the rear, and the Negro at the window seat next to Rosa Parks stood up and she let him go by.

Even today. Mrs. Parks doesn't know exactly why she didn't move, why she kept her seat and set off the Montgomery us strike that, in reality, aunched the activist civil rights uovement. simply didn't think I should lave to get up and stand in the jack after I was there already," she said. She recalled the incident with a lingering trace of awe, as if it had happened to someone else.

"It was one of hose things that grow on you. They were killing people and jurning churches, same as now." A slender woman with grey- necked hair, Mrs. Parks lives in Detroit now, mariy miles away from Montgomery, but not so many days distant from that I A I Four pretty girls are better than two, even if two of them are just reflections. The costumes worn by the models are part of a fashion show sponsored by the Brazilian embassy in Tokyo. Dec.

1, 1955, evening when she refused to move to the back of the bus. From her defiant a -sprung the Montgomery busl non olcnl demonstrations that Wayiiesboro Water Level Slightly Low WAYNESBORO The caretaker of the reservoir which serves this community a questioned Wednesday in connection with area drought conditions. Elvin Wagaman, Waynesboro Rt. 4, caretaker of the Antic- lam impounding dam located at South Mountain, said that the water in the local reservoir is only six inches below normal. The reservoir was at its lowest level in 1953 when I water dropped to 12 feet below normal height, said Wagaman.

There is no water flowing over the spillway presently, he noted, because the flow could not adequately supply Waynesboro. A valve was opened Aug. 16 so that the area could he supplied. Wagaman estimated that at present there are 140 million gallons of water in the reservoir. This is only 10 million gallons less than when the level is normal.

He attributed large amount of water in the reservoir to the large snowfall during the past winter. boycott, the Rev. Martin Luther King famed "walk to freedom" and a whole series of swept northward and westward across the nation. Two years after that incident on the Montgomery bus, Mrs. Parks moved to D'etroit to be I SUITS Divorce suits were filed in Circuit Court by Patricia A.

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The decision, she said, had nothing to do with the Montgomery boy cotl. Soon after she arrived, hei husband found a job as a barber. She did sewing and altcra- lion work at home for a time, but recently found a dressmaking job in a small factory. 'I don't feel a great aeal of difference here, personally," she said in an interview. "Housing segregation is just as bad, and it seems more noticeable in the large cities.

There is so much gradualism, I'm in favor of any move to show that we are dissatisfied and still haven't re ccived our rights as citizens." Mrs. Parks, 51, has not given up the fighl. She is vice prcsi- denl of her block club, which Is dedicated to cultural and, neighborhood Improvements and planning a youth program that Includes recreation and Job gui- her dance. Looking back now, at that December evening in the bus and her subsequent arrest, on how the Negro ministers flocked behind' Dr. King and rallied the Negro community with thousands of pamphlets, on how Ihe majority of Montgomery's Negroes walked to work for 831 days until the bus segregation system, collapsed.

On the $10 fine, and court costs that stm never paid, Rosa Parks had no regret whatsoever. "It brought change," she said, "And any change is better than none at all." No Injuries In Car Collision Two cars were involved in a minor accident Wednesday morning. The accident occurred at 11:40 a.m. at the intersection of S. Locust St.

and E. Washington St. as one of the two cars, which were both approaching the on S. Locust moved into the left lane, apparently planning a left turn. The driver of the second vehicle, William J.

Wright, 43, of 723 Washington told he assumed the driver of the first car was turning left and he accelerated his car. By this time, the driver of (he first car, Claude Edwards, Ilagcrstown, Rt. 4, returned to the right lane and the car driven by Wright struck the Edwards vehicle in the right rear bumper. There were no charges or injuries in the accident. Damage was light.

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