Amelia Scott Green

By Marty Roney
Montgomery Advertiser

For Amelia Scott Green, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began early one morning when she noticed a piece of paper hanging on her door.

"We lived on Decatur Street, right by Moody's Hardware," she said. "I always checked the front door before I went to work. When I was going out the back door I saw the piece of paper. It said not to ride the buses. That's how it started. They were building Normandale then. I worked out that way seeing after white folk's children, nursing them and taking care of them. I had to walk from Decatur Street to Normandale, and then back home. The bus was the only way for colored folks to get around back then."

At 88, she says "age has got me, and I don't get around much anymore." She gets around with the aid of a walker, which allows her to tend her flowers on the porch of her ground-floor apartment. The space is festooned with orange, purple and white blooms. When the Montgomery Advertiser showed up to conduct this interview, she walked around pulling newspaper clippings about the boycott.

"I went to every meeting I could get to over at the Molton Street Baptist Church," she said. "My brother-in-law drove a taxi, and if he was off work he would carry us to the meeting. Or we walked. My sister and me always sat right up front, close to the preacher."

A cancer survivor, Green vividly remembers the first time she met the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I had just got out of the hospital and there was a meeting on Union Street," Green said. "I wanted to shake his hand, I wanted to ask the Lord to take care of him and us."

It wasn't until years after the boycott that Green realized the impact it had.

"It was big here in Montgomery, everybody knew that," she said. "My family always took the paper, and I read it ever since I could read. I read the paper now to keep up with what's going on. The paper told us that the world was changed because what took place here."

She told her story while sitting on the couch, with a pedestal fan stirring the tepid air. She apologized to her visitors, saying she doesn't like to be cold, because it makes her arthritis "act up." Her walls of her front room are covered with photos of her six children and so many grandchildren she "can't keep up with all of them." She and her husband, Lester, lived at Patterson Court for more than 25 years before they moved to this apartment. Hanging on the wall is a plague from the Montgomery-Tuskegee Times naming her the honorary mayor of Patterson Court. Lester Green died last year at 93, after working decades at the Montgomery Country Club.

"We raised our children to be somebody," Green said in a voice full of conviction. "We wouldn't let the world change them or keep them down. That's what these young folks need to know today, that it didn't always used to be this way. They don't know what hard times are. The boycott started the change for that. It wasn't a one-person boycott, it was thousands of people that made the change. Things are better now because of what went on then."

It doesn't take long for visitors to realize her faith is the cornerstone of her life. When the interview was over, she offered a prayer with the three white men who came to visit. She clasped their hands in hers with a surprising strength asking God's blessing "on these young men."

"People need to realize this ain't their world, it's God's world - He's the boss, He's in control," she said. "Back then we leaned on the everlasting arms and God took care of us. I've been leaning on God my whole life."

She bears no malice for a system or culture that once looked down on her race.

"I'm for everybody... I love everybody," she said. "We're supposed to help each other, treat each other like we want to be treated. You see somebody down, you stop and help them up.

"It's sad we had to go through all this for some folks to see black folks as humans. But we are all humans. We all have blood. My blood would help you and your blood will help me. God made us all, and God made us to love each other."