Picture it: Rosa Parks, face turned to the window on her left, is at the front of the bus, where black people never were seen before, and in a seat behind her is a young white male, his face almost expressionless.
Nicholas C. Chriss, the man on the bus, was not some irritated Alabama segregationist preserved for history but a reporter working at the time for United Press International out of Atlanta, reports the Houston Chronicle. He died of an aneurysm at the age of 62 in 1990.
Catherine Chriss, Nicholas' daughter and a journalist currently caring for her three young daughters, wrote a poem in November about the picture and the way her father became "the white man. The angry man. The one who looks like he's a banker. But isn't."
Nicholas Chriss, who also worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle, publicly revealed his role in the picture just once. It was three paragraphs in the middle of an article he wrote for the Houston Chronicle in 1986 about his experiences covering the civil-rights movement. He said he boarded the bus in downtown Montgomery, Ala., and he and Parks were the only riders in the front of the bus.
He wrote: "It was a historic occasion. I was then with the United Press International wire service … But to this day no one has ever made clear that it was a reporter, I, covering this event and sitting behind Mrs. Parks, not some sullen white segregationist! … It was a great scoop for me, but Mrs. Parks had little to say. She seemed to want to savor the event alone."
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Saturday, December 10th 2005 at 6:16PM
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