Blake continued working at the bus company until he retired in 1974. He did not like to say much to the media or his family about the Parks matter, such as in 1989 when he was approached by a reporter of the The Washington Post and yelled about wanting to close the book on the matter because of the "lies" printed about him while alleging that black people had called his house for weeks after In 1955, Rosa Parks ignited a civil rights revolution by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Had she noticed that James Blake was behind the wheel, she might never have James Fred Blake (April 14, 1912 – March 21, 2002) was an American bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, whom Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Born on April 14, 1912, Blake was drafted into the Army on December 23, 1943, at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama. James F. Blake, the Montgomery, Ala., bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, has died. He was 89. Blake died of a heart attack Montgomery bus driver James Blake ordered Parks and three other African Americans seated nearby to move ("Move y'all, I want those two seats,") to the back of the bus. Three riders complied; Parks did not. The following excerpt of what happened next is from Douglas Brinkley's 2000 Rosa Park's biography. The bus driver, James Blake, noticed and asked Parks and other black passengers in the middle section to move. By the terms of Alabama segregation, all four Black people in the row Parks was seated in would have to get up so one man could sit down. Montgomery bus drivers carried guns. No one moved. After everyone had boarded, James Blake, the white bus driver, spotted a white passenger “standing just inside the entrance.” Blake proceeded to demand that Parks along with three other Black Rosa Parks writes “I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it any more.” On the evening of Dec. 1, 1955, when bus driver James Blake ordered her to give up her seat to a white passenger and she refused. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, once the "white" section was filled. A police officer arrested her. Yes, it was James Blake behind the wheel that night, the same driver ingrained in her mind from twelve years earlier. And when Blake told her to move to the back of the bus, it resurrected the memory of her nemesis and his cruel transgression. Only this time Rosa Parks stood her ground and refused to give in. Rosa Parks: Rosa Parks worked as a seamstress in the city of Montgomery, Alabama during the middle of the 20th century. In her spare time, she volunteered as a secretary for the NAACP and used the bus to get around town. Rosa Parks (center, in dark coat and hat) rides a bus at the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Alabama, Dec. 26, 1956. Don Cravens/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images. Most of us know Rosa Parks as the African American woman who quietly, but firmly, refused to give up her bus seat to a white person Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. That small act of James F. Blake, the bus driver who asked Rosa Parks to move to the back of the bus talks about that historic day. On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was Then a 28-year-old patrol officer with Montgomery Police Department, he was the first officer to arrive on scene when bus driver James Blake called police on a black woman who refused to change Rosa Parks (1913—2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions "James Blake, 89; Driver Had Rosa Parks Arrested". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 5, 2023. The obituary also noted that Parks had offered her condolences to the Blake family through the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit. "[I'm] sure his family will miss him," Parks was reported to have said in the message. Four days before she made her bus stand, Rosa Parks attended a packed mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to hear Dr. T.M. Howard speak. A key organizer around the Emmett Till case, Howard had helped locate witnesses, and Emmett’s mother Mamie Till had stayed at his house during the trial. 1. Understanding the Context: The Background of Rosa Parks and James Blake. To comprehend the magnitude of Rosa Parks’ remarkable stand, it is essential to delve into the backgrounds of both Rosa Parks and James Blake. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman at the time, had long been involved in civil rights activism in Montgomery /r/History is a place for discussions about history. Feel free to submit interesting articles, tell us about this cool book you just read, or start a discussion about who everyone's favorite figure of minor French nobility is!
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