Claudette Colvin by Phillip Hoose

picture window, and peered out at the first buses as they moved past his house. They were nearly empty. Usually they were filled with maids and black schoolchildren. Excited, he jumped in his car and drove around Montgomery to inspect other buses during the morning commute. In an hour of driving, he saw a total of only eight black passengers on the buses. Clearly the message “please . . . don’t ride the bus at all on Monday” had reached almost everyone.

    The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was a passionate speaker. For Claudette, his speeches “just brought out everything you wanted to say to a white person”
    That evening, a “mass meeting” was held at the Holt Street Baptist Church, to celebrate the day’s triumph and to plan for the future. By 7:00 p.m., nearly one thousand people were wedged shoulder to shoulder inside the brightly lit church, while four thousand more gathered outside in the chilly darkness to hear songs and speeches and prayers broadcast through makeshift speakers.
    Dr. King, elected just that morning as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, was the main speaker. It was his first major public speech that wasn’t a church sermon, and he needed to inspire this crowd. When introduced, he grasped the sides of the pulpit and took a moment to collect himself. Turning to Rosa Parks, seated behind him in a special place of honor, he began, “Just last Thursday . . . one of the finest citizens in Montgomery . . . was taken from a bus—and carried to jail and arrested—because she refused to give up—to give her seat to a white person . . . And since it had to happen, I’m happy it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment.”
    MLK’S BOYHOOD BUS EXPERIENCE
    Martin Luther King, Jr., knew firsthand about bitter times on the bus. When he was fourteen, he traveled from Atlanta to a Georgia town to take part in a speech contest. On the way home a white bus driver ordered King and his teacher to give up their seats to white riders. King refused at first, but his teacher persuaded him to give way. He had to stand for several hours. Twenty years later he called it “the angriest I have ever been in my life.”
    Toward the end of his address, Dr. King delivered lines for which he would be remembered. “And we are determined here in Montgomery,” he said, his voice rising in intensity, “to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” His passionate words rocked the church. “Standing beside love is always justice,” he continued. “Not only are we using the tools of persuasion—but we’ve got to use the tools of coercion.” When King sat down to thunderous applause, the crowd inside and outside was ready to act. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy took the pulpit and read a resolution asking that all citizens refrain from riding buses operated by Montgomery City Lines, Inc. “All in favor of the motion, stand,” Abernathy said. Everyone in the room climbed to their feet.
    It was the first of millions and millions of steps to come. The Montgomery bus boycott was born.

    C LAUDETTE: Mom and Velma went to the mass meeting, but I stayed home. I was in a different mind. I was depressed, I was pregnant, I had been expelled from school, and I was leaving home. I had already taken the NAACP records back to Rosa’s house and left them with her mother.
    Right before Christmas, Mom drove Velma and me to Birmingham. We hadChristmas there with my birth mother’s family and visited some friends. Then Mom and Velma went back to Montgomery. I was on my own.
    That was an important time for me. My parents were so strict, especially Mom. She tried to make all the decisions for me. Being away from her