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James Frederick Blake (April 14, 1912 – March 21, 2002) was an American bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, whom Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery bus boycott.

Early life

Born on April 14, 1912, Blake was drafted into the Army on December 23, 1943, at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama.

He worked as a bus driver for Montgomery Bus City Lines until 1974. After he retired, he became a member of the Morningview Baptist Church.

Arrest of Rosa Parks

On June 15, 1955, while driving a bus in Montgomery, Blake tried to run off the road a car driven by a black woman, Lucille Times. When she stopped to run an errand in Montgomery, he parked his bus across the street and proceeded to yell at her and they exchanged epithets and started fighting. Furious, Ms. Times contacted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the bus company but received no response. She also sent unpublished letters to newspapers in Montgomery and Atlanta. For the next six months, Ms. Times retaliated against the bus company by driving by bus stops to offer free rides to waiting black passengers. In effect, Times began a boycott of the bus company six months before the NAACP and Rosa Parks began the better-known boycott of that company.

In 1955, Montgomery's black leaders were preparing to make a legal case against racial discrimination on the city bus system. Rosa Parks was selected to be the central figure in a challenge to the Jim Crow laws which supported segregation.

Years before, in 1943, Parks had boarded a bus driven by Blake. She entered the front door of that bus and paid her fare; as she continued on to take a seat, Blake told her to disembark and enter the bus again from the back door, a rule imposed by some drivers. When she got off to re-enter through the back however, Blake drove the bus away. Parks vowed to herself she would never ride with Blake again.

Blake and Parks encountered each other again on December 1, 1955 (Parks having forgotten to check who was driving the bus on this occasion), when Blake ordered Parks and three other black people to move to the back of his Cleveland Avenue bus (number 2857) in order to make room for a white passenger. By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." When she refused, Blake first contacted the bus company and called his boss remarking, "I called the company first, just like I was supposed to do," Blake recalled in a later interview with the Washington Post. "I got my supervisor on the line. He said, 'Did you warn her, Jim?' I said, 'I warned her.' And he said, and I remember it just like I'm standing here, 'Well then, Jim, you do it, you got to exercise your powers and put her off, hear?' And that's just what I did."

Parks, after being arrested, was fined $10 plus $4 in court fees (a total of $161.11 as of 12 Mar 2024). Later, Blake contacted the police and signed the warrant for her arrest (Chapter 6, Section 11, of the city code gave drivers police powers for the racial assignment of seats.) The arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and led to Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 court case on the basis of which a United States District Court abolished segregation in transportation for the jurisdiction in which Montgomery, Alabama, is located.

Commenting on the event afterwards, Blake stated, "I wasn't trying to do anything to that Parks woman except do my job. She was in violation of the city codes, so what was I supposed to do? That damn bus was full and she wouldn't move back. I had my orders. I had police powers—any driver for the city did. So the bus filled up and a white man got on, and she had his seat and I told her to move back, and she wouldn't do it."

Personal life

Blake continued working at the bus company until he retired in 1974. He did not like to say much to the media or his family about the Parks matter, such as in 1989 when he was approached in 1989 from a reporter of the The Washington Post and yelled about wanting to close the book on the matter because of the "lies" printed about him while alleging that black people had called his house for weeks after the Parks incident. He joined the Morningview Baptist Church in 1980. Both the children's pastor of the church and Blake's wife defended him upon his death for his virtues as a churchgoing family man. He died of a heart attack in his Montgomery home in March of 2002, at age 89. He and his wife had been married for 68 years.

Rosa Parks was reported to have said in her condolences, " sure his family will miss him."

See also

• People of the Montgomery bus boycott

References

1. McClellan, Bill (April 7, 2003). "Remarkable History Surrounded Man's Unremarkable Life" (payment for full view). St. Louis Post-Dispatch. p. E1. Retrieved July 27, 2009. The attorney had grown up in that city, and he was returning for the funeral of one James Fred Blake, who had died at the age of 89. Fred Blake had been the bus driver who had ordered Rosa Parks to give up her seat on that fateful day December 1, 1955.
2. "Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938–1946 (Enlistment Records)". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved April 9, 2014.
3. ^ Thurber, Jon (March 26, 2002). "James Blake, 89; Driver Had Rosa Parks Arrested". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
4. https://today.troy.edu/news/lucille-times-launched-boycott-city-buses-montgomery-bus-boycott-began/
5. Risen, Clay (August 22, 2021). "Lucille Times, Who Inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dies at 100". The New York Times. p. B6.
6. "Montgomery Bus Boycott". History.com. A+E Networks. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
7. Woo, Elaine (October 25, 2005). "She Set Wheels of Justice in Motion". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 22, 2011. Bus drivers determined the rules. Some drivers made black passengers board through the front door to pay their fare, then reenter through the back door to find a seat. If they were unlucky, the bus would take off before they had a chance to get back on.
8. Pretzer, William (November–December 2005). "The Power of 2857". American Heritage. Archived from the original on December 4, 2010.
9. 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
10. "City charge faced by negro bus rider". Montgomery Advertiser. December 2, 1955.
11. "Montgomery City Code". IIT Chicago-Kent Law Library Blog. February 2, 2013.
12. "Obituary: James F Blake". The Guardian. March 27, 2002.
13. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-26-me-blake26-story.html
14. "About". Montgomery Transit – The M. Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2016-03-14.
15. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/24/montgomery/72b9733d-81fc-4367-9f84-b4471f507d74/
16. https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/Bus-Driver-in-Rosa-Parks-Arrest-Dies-7333401.php
17. Thurber, Jon (March 26, 2002). "James Blake, 89; Driver Had Rosa Parks Arrested". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 5, 2023. The obituary also noted that Parks had offered her condolences to the Blake family through the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit. " sure his family will miss him," Parks was reported to have said in the message.

• 1912 births
• 2002 deaths
• Montgomery bus boycott
• History of Montgomery, Alabama
• Bus drivers