This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, the story

of the American woman most well known for challenging segregation head on in the South. Here's

Felicia Bell to tell the story. She's the director of the Rosa Parks Museum. You'll also be hearing from Rosa Parks

herself. Segregation was an intense, rigid system of separating blacks and whites. And, I mean, down to

the cemeteries, down to the pages in the phone books, were separated by black people

and white people. So everything, every aspect of life, even in entrances to buildings,

colored entrances were smaller doorways or lower steps, separate water fountains, separate facilities for everything.

Every aspect of life was meant to keep black folks suppressed and oppressed.

So the effects of segregation on Mr. and Mrs. Parks was one that they witnessed among their friends.

They saw how, for instance, she was not the first woman, black woman to be arrested.

They saw other women in the community being harassed by these

bus drivers. They saw, you know, the effects of children being harassed. It was just before her arrest

was the Brown decision. So desegregating public schools, which did not immediately take place.

I left work on my way home December 1st, 1955.

About 6 o'clock in the afternoon, I boded the bus downtown in Montgomery on Coates Square.

As the bus proceeded out of town, downtown in Montgomery on Coates Square.

As the bus proceeded out of town, on the third stop, the white passengers had filled

the front of the bus.

When I got on the bus, the rear was filled

...