Found: Rosa Parks’s Arrest Warrant, and More Traces of Civil Rights History | The New York Times

[dropcap]MONTGOMERY[/dropcap], Ala. — Fred Gray, 87, bespectacled and a bit hard of hearing, stood quietly over the archival box. His hands, though, were a twitching blur: flipping past some folders, opening others, rustling through records that dated back more than half a century. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″]

“Some of these,” said Mr. Gray, who was a young lawyer during the height of the civil rights movement, “I’ve never seen.”

The warrant for Rosa Parks shows that it took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense., Alabama State University Archives; Montgomery Co. Circuit Court.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was tried for conspiracy for his role in the boycott. When he appealed his conviction, he posted a $1,000 bond with two co-signers.,

Here was an arrest warrant declaring that Rosa Parks, a client, “did refuse to take a seat assigned to her race.” ​Here was an appeal bond for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., another client.

Here were court motions and bond documents and official papers connected to the prosecutions that swept up dozens of people who participated in the Montgomery bus boycott, which galvanized civil rights demonstrators in Alabama and beyond.