"Thursday had been busy and tiring for Mrs. Raymond A. Parks. Her job as a tailor's assistant at the Montgomery Fair department store had left her neck and shoulder particularly sore, and when she left work at 5:30 p.m. that December 1, 1955, she went across the street to a drugstore in search of a heating pad. Mrs. Parks didn't find one, but she purchased a few other articles before recrossing the street to her usual bus stop on Court Square."

Chapter 1, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956, p. 11

"The next morning, Montgomery City Lines resumed full service on all of its routes. At 5:45 a.m., Abernathy, Nixon, Mrs. Parks, and Smiley gathered at the King home on South Jackson. Ten minutes later, when the first bus of the day pulled up at a nearby corner, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first passenger to the door. He paid his fare...