A little more history for ya
Unseen Civil Rights Photos Found in Alabama
Date: Monday, July 26, 2004
By: SHERREL WHEELER STEWART, BlackAmericaWeb.com
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Montgomery County, Ala. Chief Deputy Sheriff Derrick Cunningham has visited the Rosa Parks Museum in his hometown, and toured Birmingham’s Civil Rights Institute. But the history he stumbled upon a few days ago while cleaning out a closet at the Sheriff Department left him in awe.
“It was breathtaking,” Derrick told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “There they were, photos of more than 100 people indicted under the Anti-Bus Boycott Law” nearly half a century ago.
The books, which were separated by race and by gender, contained pictures of Rosa Parks, the seamstress who defiantly touched off the boycott by refusing to give up her seat to a white man, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who at the time was pastor of the city’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Cunningham also discovered booking mugs and accompanying jail logs of Parks and other eventual civil rights icons arrested Feb. 22, 1956, on charges stemming from the historic Montgomery bus boycott
Parks was prisoner No. 7053. A youthful looking picture of her displays that number. King was No. 7089. At the top of his photo, some apparently wrote years later: “Dead 4-4-68.”
