Mary Louise Smith

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For the Republican politician see Mary Louise Smith (1914-1997)

Mary Louise Smith (later Mary Louise Smith Ware) (b. 1937) is a civil rights protester. She is famous as one of the pre-Rosa Parks women who refused to give up their seat in the "whites only" section of Montgomery, Alabama city buses. She was just 18 years old when she was arrested.

The Montgomery Improvement Association rejected her as a potential plaintiff in a planned test case against segregation because her father was rumoured to be an alcoholic and it was believed this would undermine the effectiveness of the planned legal action.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Smith has lived there since her birth. She is the third of six children, four boys and two girls. Her parents both deceased, are Frank and Alberta Smith. Her mother died at the age of 42, when Mary was 15, leaving Janie, the oldest sister to become the surrogate mother of the family. Her father never remarried and worked two jobs to take care of his young family.

Mary and all her siblings attended and graduated from St. Jude Educational Institute. A devout Catholic, she is still a member of St.Jude Church where she was baptized.

At the age of 18, October 21, 1955, Mary returning home on the Montgomery, Alabama city line bus, was ordered to relinquish her seat to a white female passenger, which she refused to do. Her stand landed her in jail and she was charged with failure to obey segregation orders, some 40 days before the arrest of Rosa Parks on similar charges. Her father bailed her from jail and paid her fine, nine dollars. The incident was unknown except to family and neighbors.

Smith was a high-school dropout and housekeeper. She lived in a clapboard shack in the country with her father and siblings.

Her arrest was made known later at a mass meeting by a cousin. Attorney Fred Gray asked Smith and her father for her to become a plaintiff in a civil rights class action law suit to end segregated seating on city buses. Her father agreed, for he wanted justice for her unlawful arrest.

Smith did not learn until 1995, from a news reporter that she had been discussed as being a test case by black leaders. They could not find anything negative about Mary but she was not chosen because it was said her father was an alcoholic. This untrue allegation bothers her more than the exclusion and ignoring of her contributions by Montgomery and national black leaders for over 50 years.

When Rosa Parks died in October 2005, Smith, then 68, attended the memorial service for Parks in Montgomery, where she still lives. "I had to pay my tribute to her," Ware said. "She was our role model."

Smith continued to work for civil rights beyond the boycott and trial. She worked on voting rights campaigns and attended the March on Washington in 1963. Her sister Annie's son was a plaintiff in the lawsuit to desegregate the Y.M.C.A.

Today, Smith is active with her 12 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now divorced, Smith raised four children. Her most enjoyable hobby is reading and she is active in several of her church auxiliaries and senior citizen clubs.