NEGRESS DRAWS FINE SEGREGATION CASE INVOLVING BUS RIDE

A Negro woman was fined $10 and cost in police court here today for violation a state law requiring racial segregation on city buses.

Rosa Parks, 634 Cleveland Ave., a seamstress at a downtown store, did not testify.

Negro Atty. Fred D. Gray informed Recorder's Court Judge John B Scott he would appeal the decision to Montgomery Circuit Court. A few minutes later, Gray signed a $100 appeal bond for his client.

Also signing the woman's appeal bond was E. D. Nixon of Montgomery, a former state president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Gray had entered a plea of innocent for his client, who stood silent throughout the hearing.

BUS DRIVER TESTIFIES

City Prosecutor Eugene Loe called Montgomery City Lines bus driver J.F. Blake to the stand to open the city's case. Blake briefly told how Rosa Parks refused to move to the rear of this bus last Thursday night after he had requested her and several others to move to make room for white passengers he was taking on near the Empire Theater.

Blake said there were 22 Negroes and 14 whites seated in the 36-seat bus and that he asked several of the Negroes to move to the rear in order to equalize the seating.

CHARGED AMENDED

At the outset, Loe moved to amend the charge against Rosa Parks, making the warrant read a violation of the state law instead of the city ordinance. Gray objected but Judge Scott allowed the amendment. The state law merely sets forth as unlawful and failure for a person to comply with the assignment or re-assignment order of a bus driver.

Gray said the law was not a city law and would not apply to his client.

Loe said the state law referred to all transportation.

Gray declined to say specifically whether the state law would be attacked as unconstitutional on appeal. But he made this suggestive comment:

"Every legal issue will be raised that I think is necessary to defend my client."

The question of constitutionality was raised in Recorder's Court.

Before and during the hearing Judge Scott shooed away photographers.

90 PER CENT BOYCOTT

The steps leading into the north side of the courtroom and the sidewalk, along with the corridors leading into the east entrance of the courtroom, all were jammed with spectators and witnesses.

Meanwhile, Montgomery City Lines Manager J.H. Bagley this afternoon estimated that some 90 per cent of the Negroes were refusing to ride the buses in protest of today's hearing.

The boycott was uncovered Saturday after thousands of unsigned circulars were reportedly being spread throughout the Negro districts in Montgomery.

ONE INCIDENT

Acting upon the orders of Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers that there was to be no violence today, patrolmen arrested a 19-year-old Negro youth who allegedly tried to restrain a Negro woman from getting on one of the morning buses.

Fred Daniel, 19 of 1646 Hall St., was jailed on a charge of disorderly conduct, according to Police Chief G. J. Ruppenthal. Arresting Patrolmen R. M. Hammonds and C. A. Weaver said Daniel grabbed a Negro woman by the arm about 7:15 a.m. at the intersection of Hall and Thurman and pulled her away from a City Lines bus she was attempting to board.

NEGRO TAXI CABS BUSY

All Negro taxi cab operators in the city reportedly told their drivers to charge only 10 cents a head today from the hours 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m. in an effort to make the bus boycott effective.

Several buses seen on downtown streets today carried nothing but white passengers from front to rear.

Several thousand Negroes use the buses on a normal day.

Police cars and motorcycles followed the buses periodically to prevent trouble after Sellers said some Negroes reported they were threatened with violence if they rode buses today.

MASS MEETING TONIGHT

A mass meeting of Negroes has also been scheduled tonight at the Holt Street Baptist Church to discuss "further instructions" in the "economic reprisal" campaign against the Montgomery City Bus Lines.

The circulars distributed in Negro residential districts Saturday urging the boycott today in protest to the arrest of Rosa Parks were not signed. Rev. A. W. Williams, pastor of the Negro church where the meeting is to be held, said he would not disclose "under any circumstances" the names of those who asked permission to use the church for the meeting.

He said the meeting would be open to whites as well as Negroes.

Earlier, Bagley had issued a statement saying the bus company "is sorry if anyone expects us to be exempt from any state or city law."

In the Rosa Parks case today, the city was prepared to offer testimony from 11 witnesses. Only three, Blake and two women passengers testified. One of the women said there was an empty seat where Rosa Parks could have sat if she had moved to the rear.