This is an I-Heart podcast.

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 fountain, 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 boated 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.

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