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technically Parks had not violated the city ordinance, decided that the arrest should be based on the segregation laws of the state of Alabama instead, a more serious offense. Parks was not allowed to call her husband until she was photographed and fingerprinted. She remembered later that it hurt when they pulled her fingernails to make the prints. Then they placed her in a cell by herself, though the matron moved her to a cell with two other women, explaining that this way she would not be as lonely. One of her cellmates ignored her, but the other told her that she was in jail for attacking her boyfriend with an ax. The woman said she had acted in self-defense because her boyfriend was trying to hurt her. After listening to the woman’s story, Parks wanted to help. The matron interrupted their conversation though. Parks was finally allowed to make a call after indicating, in writing, whom she was telephoning. The matron gave her a dime for the public phone booth and remained nearby listening. Parks’s mother answered the phone at home. “Did they beat you?” she wanted to know as soon as she heard her daughter was in jail. Parks

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Rosa Parks’s 1955 arrest:

C H A P T E R 1 : U N D E R A R R E S T

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