National Affairs 1956: Rosa Parks, Wreck of the Andrea Doria

ALABAMA Double-Edged Blade

On Dec. 1, 1955 Mrs. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old Negro seamstress, was ordered by a Montgomery City Lines bus driver to get up and make way for some white passengers. She refused, was arrested and fined $10 under an Alabama law making it a misdemeanor for any person to disobey a bus driver's seating instructions. But that was not the last of the Rosa Parks case: it has since been used to prove that economic reprisal, as advocated against Negroes by the white Citizens' Councils of the South, is a double-edged blade.

Within 48 hours after Rosa Parks had been arrested, mimeographed leaflets were being circulated in Montgomery's Negro sections, calling for a one-day boycott of the city buses. The strike was so successful that Negro leaders decided to continue it until their demands were met. The demands: that Negroes be seated on a first-come, first-served basis without having to vacate their places for white passengers; that white bus drivers show more courtesy toward Negro passengers; that Negro drivers be employed on buses traveling mostly through Negro districts.

Last week, as it entered its second month, the boycott was still 95% effective. Rallies were held twice a week in Negro churches. The strike spirit showed no signs of flagging. A Negro minister, working for the car pool, stopped to pick up an old woman who had obviously walked a long way. "Sister," said he, "aren't you getting tired?" Her reply: "My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired and my soul is resting."

DISASTERS Against the Sea

On her last night out, the Italian Liner Andrea Doria sliced through a gentle ocean, and an awesome wall of North Atlantic fog closed in around her. But the ship's mood as she neared the U.S. was fog-free and gay. In the plush, boat deck Belvedere lounge, dancers swayed to the rhythms of an eight-piece orchestra. Their last song: Arrivederci, Roma.

Shortly after 11 p.m. one of Andrea Doria's card players looked idly out of a starboard window and gasped. Eerie lights of another ship glinted and sprinted out of the darkness towards Andrea Doria. A moment later, with a grinding, crunching roar, Stockholm's knife-sharp prow (reinforced for ice in northern ports) ground 30 ft. deep into the starboard quarter of Andrea Doria, just abaft her flying bridge. Then, with a shudder and shower of sparks, the shivering vessels jerked apart.

On Andrea Doria's upper decks the explosive collision hurled the card players to the floor and ripped their tables from the sockets. Bar patrons were showered by their nightcaps and banged by flying glassware. Moviegoers were hurled into screaming heaps. Promenaders were slammed against bulkheads. In the Belvedere lounge the dancers picked themselves up from the floor and dazedly headed toward muster stations.

Below decks the crash and the quick list of Andrea Doria lifted sleepers out of bed and hurled them around cabins, to be sprayed by flying porthole glass. Passengers an stairways were jerked off and slapped to the deck. Smoke drifted back from the long (40 ft.) gash along the ship's starboard. Oil and water sloshed along the corridors. Over the ship's loudspeaker came Italian commands to remain calm, but they were only half heard or not understood.