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THE ARREST Two policemen returned with Blake to the bus. The driver pointed to Parks and said, “That one won’t stand up.” After one officer asked if the driver had requested her to rise, he then questioned, “Why don’t you stand up?” “Why do you push us around?” Parks responded with a question of her own as the policemen approached. “I don’t know,” the officer said, “but the law is the law, and you’re under arrest.” One officer took Parks’s purse, and the other took her shopping bag while she was led off the bus. As they left, an officer asked Blake if he wanted to press charges. “Yes,” said the driver. He would finish his route before going to city hall to swear out and sign an arrest warrant, until then Parks was held in custody. Parks rode alone in the back of the police car to Montgomery City Hall. On the drive an officer repeated the query about why she didn’t stand when asked. She held her silence. In city hall she passed a fountain and asked if she could have some water. A different policeman stopped her just as she bent to take a sip. A simple drink of water too was denied her until she reached her jail cell. Heading to the processing area the police took her belongings again, asked her if there was anything in her pockets, and questioned her as to whether she was drunk, unable to believe that any respectable, sober woman would challenge white authority as Parks had done. Indeed, the timid-looking, 42-year-old seamstress seemed an unlikely candidate for defying the segregation laws; in doing so, she was challenging the very nature of southern society. “I’ve always been timid,” Parks later said of herself, “but my entire life has demanded of me that I be courageous.” She was a determined woman with no great fear or anger that day. She was fingerprinted and mug shots were taken before being led to her cell by a white matron. City police arrested Parks on charges of violating the segregation laws of Montgomery, but the city prosecutor, recognizing that

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C I V I L R I G H T S L E A D E R S : R O S A PA R K S