Buses and bar stools: Landmark civil rights anniversaries

Rosa Parks was born 110 years ago this month. The civil rights leader, a native of historic Tuskegee, AL, became world renowned when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, AL on Dec. 1, 1955.

A bus boycott by all people of color and their supporters lasted for 381 days and the Montgomery Public Transit System saw a loss of 20,000 riders who walked or carpooled as a result. A young 25-year-old preacher from the nearby Dexter Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr, was named as leader of the effort, and began a life’s passion for correcting racial injustice across the country.

Parks was arrested and convicted in city court of disorderly conduct and ordered to pay a fine of 10 dollars plus four dollars in court costs. Her attorney, Fred Gray, whom she had known in her capacity as secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, appealed the case, but lost.

Later the next year, the U.S. District Court, upon hearing a similar but separate case also based in Montgomery, ruled that racial segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional.

It was the economic impact and loss of revenue from the bus boycott, however, that demonstrated the collective power of people of color in Alabama and, prospectively, cities throughout the South. It wasn’t just the courts, but peaceful protest, that ultimately made the difference.

It also wasn’t just Rosa Parks. Nine months before, on March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin had refused to give up her seat on her way home from school. She was arrested, but had better luck in court than Parks, with Gray also as her lawyer. Initially convicted, Gray appealed on behalf of her and three other women, including Aurelia Browder.

They had each been forced to move off the bus, and in June of 1956, the District Court ruled in favor of Colvin and Browder, declaring the segregated bus system to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law.

The city of Montgomery then attempted to override the ruling, petitioning the United States Supreme Court to review it. The Justices, on Nov. 13, 1965, upheld the lower court’s decision, affirming equal rights on public transit.

From a legal perspective, the case of Rosa Parks was a setback. It was Claudette Colvin and Aurelia Browder whose arrest and court case actually defined the law. Nonetheless, the subsequent attention brought to racial discrimination by the bus boycott and publicity garnered by the charismatic Martin Luther King Jr., brought change not just to public transportation, but the scourge of racial inequity across America.

Colvin moved to New York where she became a nurse in a Manhattan retirement home. She received a Congressional Certificate of Achievement from Alabama 14th District U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley, and in 2021, the record of her arrest was ordered expunged.

Browder, who was 20 years older, went on to earn a degree in science from Alabama State University, then became a nurse and an active member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She passed away in 1971.

Parks, who ascended to iconic status as a symbol of the civil rights movement, relocated to Detroit and served as a staffer for U.S. Rep. John Conyers for 24 years. In 1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, and, upon her death in 2005, Parks became the first woman to be accorded the honor of lying in state beneath the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

Iowa, though, had its own much less known leader in civil rights, and she made her stand seven years ahead of Colvin, Browder, and Parks.

Edna Griffin was a native of Lexington, KY, but moved to Des Moines when her husband enrolled to be a doctor at what is now Des Moines University. On July 7, 1948, she and her children stopped by the Katz Drug Store at 7th and Locust and ordered an ice cream soda. The owner, Maurice Katz, refused to serve her, saying the store was not equipped to serve colored people.

Griffin then initiated a criminal lawsuit against Katz, claiming he had violated the Iowa 1884 Civil Rights Act. At the same time, with members of the local chapter of the NAACP, she also led marches and picketed in front of the store.

The District Court ruled in her favor, citing the law passed by the legislature 64 years previous (the 1884 Act, interestingly, didn’t outright ban discrimination everywhere in the state, but did make it a crime to deny “the full and equal enjoyment” at restaurants, inns, lunch counters, barbershops, and theaters or other places of amusement in Iowa).

With that section of state law supporting her, the lower court ruled she and all others, were entitled to be served and leveled a fine of $50 against the owner of the drugstore. Griffin, not satisfied, wanted to make a larger point, and filed a lawsuit claiming $10,000 in damages against Katz.

The civil courts also ruled in her favor, but, reluctant to invoke a crippling financial blow to the store, awarded Griffin one dollar. Despite the limited award, it was considered a moral victory for all people of color and today Edna Griffin Park stands at the corner of College Avenue and 13th Street, a few blocks north of the former drugstore, as a memorial to one of the Hawkeye State’s pivotal civil rights leaders.

Griffin, who died in 2000, was also honored in 2004 with the naming of the Edna Griffin Memorial Pedestrian Bridge, where I-235 separates two sides of town, as a symbol of the connection between peoples which she brought to the city more than a half century before.

You can learn more of her story of determination by visiting the site of the drugstore, in the renamed Edna Griffin Building, which bears a plaque telling of her legacy. It’s a legacy we should remember, especially in this month of Black History commemoration.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.