After her arrest on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man under the city's segregation laws, Rosa Parks sparked off a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, USA. It earned her the title, 'Mother of the modern civil rights movement'. In 1950's America the average wage of blacks was half that of whites and in the Southern states three quarters of blacks eligible to vote were not registered due to intimidation. Of her arrest, Parks remembered: "When the policemen approached me . . one said, 'Why don't you stand up?' And I said 'I don't think I should have to stand up', and I asked him 'why do you push us around?' He said, 'I do not know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.'" Immediately afterwards the Women's Political Council called for the boycott which was lead by the newly elected leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, 26 year old Martin Luther King, Jr. For over a year, until the buses were finally desegregated, the city's 50,000 blacks took an alternative form of transport - most on foot. "It started in 1955, but it was 1956 when we really understood there was a movement in progress. It was the first time that black people in this country had stood up in one particular area as a united force." Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Jr.
.lc.llWomen's lib: Spirit of the times.ll.lsWR09:WR09_02S.ls
