ABSTRACT
Early Thursday evening, December 1, 1955, Virginia and Cliff Durr had just returned home from Cliff’s law office in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, when a call came from E.D.Nixon. Nixon worked as a pullman porter and was one of the city’s most prominent black political leaders. He told Cliff that Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP Youth leader, had been arrested. The police refused to provide Nixon with any information. Cliff telephoned the jail and learned that Parks had been arrested for violating a city segregation ordinance. He called Nixon back, and the two men agreed to meet at the jail. Virginia assured her daughters, Tilla and Lulah, that they would return soon. Then she grabbed her coat and hurried out to the car behind her husband.
