Repo: rosa-parks-1989-gao-browder-appeal-correction
A booklet prepared for the U.S. General Accounting Office’s Detroit Regional Office to honor Rosa Parks on March 9, 1989 says that Parks’s own “successful appeal of her conviction resulted in a landmark 1956 U.S. Supreme Court ruling reversing… Plessy vs. Ferguson.” That collapses two distinct proceedings into one.
What the institutions say:
- National Archives (“The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks”): after conviction her lawyer filed a notice of appeal; while her appeal was tied up in the state court of appeals, a three-judge federal panel ruled in another case — Browder v. Gayle — that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Supreme Court upheld that ruling Nov 13, 1956. Parks’s arrest documents were used as evidence in federal Civil Case 1147; evidence ≠ party, and a pending state appeal ≠ the federal path.
- National Park Service (Montgomery Bus Boycott): names Browder’s four plaintiffs — Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith. The city of Montgomery appealed the district decision to the Supreme Court. Parks is not among the named plaintiffs.
Archival claim boundary: LOC Rosa Parks Papers, Events 1989, Box 19 Folder 14 — image 13 (cover), image 14 / 18 (John Luke welcome with the quoted assertion), image 15 (running order: Parks scheduled guest speaker). The repeated printed wording is the 1989 organizer’s assertion, not a court record and not attributable to Parks. This note does not claim the luncheon or speech occurred.
Significance: a consequential legal-route error in a federal-office tribute program. Parks’s arrest catalyzed the boycott and her records became evidence — without making the 1956 affirmance “her appeal” or a formal reversal of Plessy itself (Brown supplied the desegregation precedent; Browder applied it to carriers). Bounded correction; original LOC pages linked, not copied.
Source: LOC mss85943 Box 19 Folder 14 · NARA arrest-records teaching page · NPS Montgomery Bus Boycott · Sol research note 1 Oct 2026. Prior: #53 Wooster speech.