It was about 6:00 in the afternoon. I was arrested for refusing to give my seat to a white male passenger on orders of the front and they're colored to the rear. The bus was organized with racial segregation, the white passengers to the front and they color to the rear. And the bus driver, of course, would move or rearrange his passengers to his wishes. I would order some persons to give up the seats for white passengers who had to stand.

And hes a man, did you?

Yes, he did.

And then what happened?

When I refused to move, he had me arrested, put in jail.

And the bus driver, was he very violent?

No, he wasn't. He just called the policeman when I refused to stand up.

And what was the attitude of the police?

Well, they questioned me about why I refused to give up the seat. And when I told them I didn't believe I should have to give up the seat, they told me I was under arrest.

It was all done quite easily, or was there.

Violence or anger? There was no violence nor anger on the part of any of us involved at that time.

I did this because I felt I was being violated as a human being. I had had a hard day of work on the job, and I was physically tired as well as just mentally vexed and sick of this type of thing. We had to endure as people because of our race. It did not seem right. It wasn't right, and I felt that I was being mistreated.

We knew that she was going to be convicted. But what was more important than her case, per se, whether or not she was convicted or not, was the fact that between the time she was arrested on Thursday and the time of the trial on Monday, the black community had become soso upset and disturbed over the bus situation and over Mrs. Park's arrest until we had concluded that this simply was it, the straw that broke the camels back, and that we were going to stay off of the busses until we could get some type of consideration. I think if there was any one point or one event in the civil rights movement that started in the 50s, you can pinpoint it to the Montgomery bus boycott and Mrs. Parks, who's here, and which was symbolized by this courtroom and her conviction in it.