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pleasure.

FRED TAYLOR
    Fred Taylor grew up in Montgomery and was thirteen years old when the bus boycott began.
    I remember folks talking about what had happened to Mrs. Parks. Reverend Abernathy talked about it, and I remember the church raising money for the boycott. I had to slip to go to the mass meetings up at my church because my grandmother didn’t want me to go. I remember how fearful she was for me. I had to lie about where I had been. I thought my grandmama was mean. She said, “Boy, you just can’t go.” And I said, “Why?”
    As a kid I never was afraid. And I was puzzled as to why my grandparents were so afraid of what was going on. Now, looking back, I understand—because of the intimidation and fear for losing their lives and all of that. My grandmother was a domestic worker. She was a maid for white folks. And my grandfather was a porter for a furniture company, delivering furniture in the city of Montgomery. My grandmother went along with the boycott and did not get on the bus. Although she was afraid, that was the thing to do. Her employer came by and picked her up. That’s how she got to work.
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    At the time the boycott began, all these news reporters started following my pastor and Dr. King around. Something I guess happened to me, particularly as I began to listen to Dr. King’s speeches. I can remember going to mass meetings during the boycott and hearing him speak. You know the mastery of the English language that Dr. King had. I can remember the euphoria, and how he would turn people on.
    He would talk about the fact that you are somebody and you are important. This was compared to my orientation of being put down or told, “Boy, you’re not going to be anything.” A classic example was people would say, “You knotty-head boy, why don’t you sit down?”
    But when Dr. King started talking, he’d say, “You are somebody.” And that began to rub off on me. It was right during the boycott that I began to have a different assessment of myself as an individual and to feel my sense of worth. Not only did it affect me, but I began to look at my family and how the white community related to them.
    The boycotters challenged the segregation laws in court. Finally in November 1956 the United States Supreme Court declared the bus segregation laws unconstitutional. On December 21, nearly thirteen months after the protest had begun, blacks again rode the Montgomery City Lines buses.
    Before the boycott I’d taken the buses and gone to the back. After the boycott was over, I participated with a group of students riding predominantly white routes, deliberately sitting in the front of the bus. In our orientation for this particular project we were told to make sure we were well groomed. I sat up there very proudly. I would sit beside a white man, but I consciously did not sit by a white woman. I can remember a boy, Jeremiah Reeves, who got electrocuted for allegedly raping a white woman.
    In some instances when I would sit by a white man, he would jump up and leave. I was thinking, “Ain’t nothing wrong with me. I don’t stink, I took a bath this morning.” When they’d jump up, I just thought it was sort of strange.

PRINCELLA HOWARD
    Princella Howard was eight years old when the boycott started. She and her six-year-old sister Barbara grew up in a family that was actively involved in MIA activities. Both girls participated in the boycott and went on to become student leaders in the Montgomery civil rights movement of the 1960s.
    What’s so amazing is that it only takes a few. You see, it was just a handful of people before the bus boycott. Nobody in their wildest imagination could have conceived that that kind of organization and cooperation would have been forthcoming. We were just a group of people going about daily life getting ready for Christmas. That was the biggest thing on all the kids’ minds. Santa