I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home
Attributed toRosa Parks1913–2005 · American civil rights activist
≈Attribution status: Better sourced than most Parks quotations — but the trail ends at a magazine profile, not at Parks.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
This line is in better shape than most quotations pinned on Rosa Parks: Wikiquote carries it in its sourced section, not the unsourced list, and cites Rita Dove’s profile of Parks in Time of 14 June 1999. Two things keep it short of verified. The citation is to a magazine essay written forty-four years after the event, not to Parks’s own book or a transcript; and the essay itself could not be retrieved from this session, so we have not seen the sentence in its original setting or confirmed whether Dove presents it as Parks’s words.
“I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home” attributed to Rosa Parks (1913–2005), quoted in Rita Dove, Time, 14 June 1999; not confirmed against a primary source. Traced by Quotle.info.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Rosa Parks — American civil rights activist · Montgomery, Alabama. Theme: "I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the quote actually comes from
Attributed to
Rosa Parks
Cited to
Rita Dove, profile of Rosa Parks, Time, 14 June 1999
What that is
A secondary magazine essay, written 44 years after the 1955 arrest
Primary source
None located — no Parks book, transcript or recording carrying this wording
I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.
Quoted here as Wikiquote gives it. The Time essay in which it is said to appear could not be retrieved, so the wording has not been checked against its printed setting.
Wikiquote carries it as sourced, not unsourced. On the Rosa Parks page ↗ it sits in the main quotations list with a citation: Rita Dove, “Rosa Parks: Her simple act of protest galvanized America’s civil rights revolution,” Time, 14 June 1999. It is not on the talk page’s unsourced list ↗, where several other popular Parks lines sit.
We could not read the essay.Time’s site is refused by this session’s network, and so is the Wayback Machine, so the sentence has not been confirmed in print. We cannot tell from here whether the old link Wikiquote gives still resolves, and we are not going to guess. Everything below rests on Wikiquote’s citation rather than on the article itself, and we would rather say so than imply a reading we did not do.
Worth knowing who Rita Dove is. She is a former US Poet Laureate who, in that same year, published On the Bus with Rosa Parks ↗, a book of poems about Parks. A sentence relayed through a poet’s profile is not thereby wrong — but it is the kind of setting where narration and quotation blur, and that is a reason to keep this at “attributed.”
Her papers do not contain the phrase. A full-text search of the Rosa Parks Papers ↗ for “got on the bus to go home” returns nothing, so the Library of Congress holdings add no independent confirmation.
No rights status is asserted, and none of this is public domain. If the wording originates in the 1999 Time profile, that article is in copyright to Rita Dove and Time Inc.; if it originates in an earlier Parks interview or book, that source is in copyright to Parks’s estate and its publisher. We could not determine which, so we assert neither.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Context
Why it is quoted so often
The appeal of the line is that it deflates the monument. The bus boycott turned Parks into a symbol, and this sentence puts her back on a Thursday evening commute, going home from a day’s work as a seamstress at Montgomery Fair — the arrest something done to her, not a performance she staged.
That is also a reason to handle it carefully. It is exactly the sort of neat, quotable deflation that gets tightened in the retelling, and the earliest citation anyone offers is a magazine essay from 1999 rather than anything Parks published herself.
The trail ends at a 1999 magazine profile — which is further than most Parks quotations get, and still not Parks.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1913–2005 · American civil rights activist · Montgomery, Alabama
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was a seamstress and long-serving NAACP secretary in Montgomery, Alabama, whose refusal to give up her bus seat on 1 December 1955 set off the Montgomery bus boycott. Congress later called her the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement, a title that has had the odd side effect of attracting inspirational sentences she never demonstrably wrote. She published an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, with James Haskins in 1992, and her papers are held at the Library of Congress.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Best available source
Rosa Parks, quoted in Rita Dove, "Rosa Parks: Her simple act of protest galvanized America's civil rights revolution," Time, 14 June 1999, as cited by the English Wikiquote article "Rosa Parks" (accessed 19 September 2026). The article itself was not retrievable and the wording has not been confirmed against it; no primary Parks source carrying this wording has been located.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home’?” Last verified 19 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-did-not-get-on-the-bus-to-get-arrested-i-got-on-the-bus/