Vera Harris

By Mike Linn
Montgomery Advertiser

Vera Harris, left, and her daughter, Valda Harris Montgomery, right, have strong memories of the bus boycott days. They are shown here talking about the Rosa Parks Library and Museum. (Mickey Welsh, Montgomery Advertiser)

With the tick of an old kitchen clock inching time forward, Vera Harris made a mental leap into the past, recalling the spirited days of a cohesive black community in Montgomery circa 1955-56.

She talked of the day a bomb went off on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s porch at 303 S. Jackson St., just a few homes from where she was studying. The days her husband, Richard H. Harris Jr., and another man orchestrated a taxi service for blacks who needed transportation. She talked of empty buses. And lots of walking.

It has been 50 years since Montgomery's Bus Boycott, but Vera Harris and her daughter, Valda Montgomery, have little problem recalling the events that surrounded them then.

Led by King, blacks refused to ride city buses for 381 days following the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest of Rosa Parks, who had refused to give up her seat to a white man.

"They had to walk to school, walk to work, (get around) the best way they could, but they did it," Harris said. "I remember empty buses passing by my home, and to think it lasted a year was just beyond my expectations. I think it was a religious experience, a walk for Christ. I think it was just instilled in them - we're going to stay off the bus, we're going to stay off the bus."

Friends of King and wife Coretta, the Harris family lived just four homes down from the young minister. Richard Harris worked closely with King and others in organizing the efforts, and Harris sometimes would give rides to blacks who needed transportation.

On Jan. 30, 1956, a pregnant Harris was studying next door when King's home was bombed. She looked outside to see what had happened and saw blacks had congregated around the porch, ready to take up arms in retaliation.

When King returned from a boycott meeting, he calmed the hostile crowd.

"They were ready to go home and get guns, weapons ... (but) he quieted them down in his usual quiet voice ... he asked them to go back home, let us just be at peace and we're OK, and that was the way that ended, and they dismissed."

Montgomery remembers those days, too. She said her father moved the children to the back of the home at 333 S. Jackson St., around the time other leaders' homes were bombed.

"It sounded like a war zone. It was scary," she said.

In 1961, the Harris home served as a shelter for 31 Freedom Riders, who came after a bloody battle at a Greyhound bus stop in Montgomery, she said. Back then, National Guardsmen escorted a young Valda to school to ensure her safety, she said.

"Life magazine was here, the photographer lived here. My uncle owned a restaurant and he brought food. The (Freedom Riders) slept on floors, they slept in bathtubs, they took out beds," Montgomery said. "It was a wonderful event."