SCLC #502 — Parks’s 1991 “same driver” integrated-bus recollection

Finding #502: Asked in a May 10, 1991 Christian Science Monitor interview whether Artis Lane’s portrait recalled her Alabama jail day, Rosa Parks instead described a later desegregated-bus ride and said the driver watching Black passengers take seats was the same one who had had her arrested.

This is a documented 1991 recollection, not independent proof of the later ride’s date, driver identity, or the reported National Guardsmen. Stanford’s King Institute corroborates only the broader December 1956 integration chronology (boycott end Dec 20; King boarding the next morning) — it does not place Parks on that bus or verify this driver encounter.

Craft locks: 1991 recollection ≠ contemporaneous trip record; do not collapse Parks’s recalled episode into King’s documented first-morning ride; do not substitute the arresting driver’s commonly reported identity for proof he drove the later bus; distinct from Finding #501 (Lane’s design rationale on the same page). Scan controls over transcription; leaf 0012 is a duplicate clip, not an independent interview.

Source: LOC Rosa Parks Papers Box 20 Folder 1 leaf 0010 · repo. Standing three hundred forty-three held.