THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995 TAG: 9512010213
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
By some accounts, the modern civil rights movement was born 40 years ago today.
On that day, a city bus driver in Montgomery, Ala., told a black woman to give up her seat to a white man who was standing. The woman, a 42-year-old seamstress named Rosa Parks, refused and was promptly jailed for violating a city segregation law. Her arrest prompted a successful bus boycott, which in turn signaled the decline of Jim Crow laws across the South and brought to prominence a young Montgomery minister, Martin Luther King Jr.
Today, South Hampton Roads' local bus line will celebrate Parks' courageous act with lowered fares and a special program. (See right.) There will be, however, no commemoration of any such heroic act ending segregation on buses here.
In South Hampton Roads, Jim Crow was dumped from the bus by accident.
The desegregation of city buses in South Hampton Roads is a bit of history the news media can be happy to claim - or maybe only somewhat happy, since they did so by mistake.
On April 24, 1956, newspapers across the country, including the area's Virginian-Pilot and Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, printed a wire-service story about a U.S. Supreme Court decision on a South Carolina bus case. The story incorrectly reported that the court's action had banned racial segregation on all public buses.
Reacting to the headlines, transit companies desegregated city buses in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Petersburg, Richmond, Roanoke, and Charlottesville as well as other cities across the South.
Ironically, one bus line that issued a desegregation order was Montgomery City Lines Inc., the company suffering the boycott sparked by Parks. But city officials ordered that segregation be enforced, and it wasn't until a subsequent Supreme Court ruling later in the year that Montgomery's buses were integrated for good.
In Virginia, many bus lines followed the high court's April ``ruling'' within 48 hours.
Norfolk city buses were operated by the Virginia Transit Co., which announced that: ``Seating in the buses will be left to the discretion of the passengers. It is hoped, however, that good judgment will be used by all passengers in order to maintain good relations.''
The change was accomplished easily. Segregation had been enforced by drivers, so there were no posted signs to remove. And ``good relations'' apparently prevailed, because no trouble was reported among passengers.
The press' error soon became apparent - the court hadn't ruled on the merits of the South Carolina case, it only sent the case back to a lower court. But, in the absence of controversy or violence, the Virginia Transit Co. continued with integration.
In July, the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch asked drivers about the effects of integration. They confirmed that there had been no disturbances, and noted that blacks were taking advantage of bus company's decision.
``Before that directive,'' driver R.H. Rowe told the paper, ``if Negroes were sitting up front and a white man got on, the Negro would move to the back. Now they just sit there.''
Even so, Jim Crow was still entrenched in other aspects of life in South Hampton Roads.
Seashore State Park, for example, was off limits to blacks until late 1956. African-Americans couldn't eat at local lunch counters until 1960, and local public schools closed in 1958 to avoid integration.
But after April 1956, blacks were finally able to take the front seats on city buses.
``We'll just sit down,'' said Robert D. Robertson, then-president of the Norfolk chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, in the April 24, 1956, edition of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch.
``Where there is a seat - anywhere!'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to give her
seat to a white person, and helped ignite the civil rights
movement.
Graphic
Local Rosa Parks anniversary activities:
Fares on Tidewater Regional Transit buses, excluding tours, will
be 50 cents today.
There will be a commemorative ceremony at the TRT office at 1500
Monticello Ave. in Norfolk at 11 a.m. The program is open to the
public. For more information, call 640-6300.
The Youth Council of the Chesapeake NAACP will have a program 7
p.m. tonight at New Light Baptist Church on Cedar Road in
Chesapeake. For more information, call 543-1029.
by CNB