So, for those of you watching “Rosa,” I want to show you the actual Montgomery, Alabama, that Rosa Parks would have seen. I’m a native of Montgomery. I grew up 4 miles from the bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested.
This is an aerial shot of Montgomery in 1951. The city is unique in that it began originally as two smaller towns that merged and was named for Gen. Richard Montgomery.
The place where the two towns met is known as Court Square. There is a gorgeous fountain and clock there. If you go down Court Square toward Commerce Street, you’ll get to the Alabama River. If you go east down Dexter Avenue, you will reach the state capitol.
This is a postcard from the 1950s showing that view. It’s extremely iconic. See the bus on the left? That is the bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested. You can see the stop for yourself on Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/nC8rghVhVwQ2
As Yaz mentions, Rosa worked at the Montgomery Fair department store. Which actually looked like this.
This is the Empire Theatre that was mentioned toward the end of the episode. It was originally built in 1914 and renovated in the 1930s. It was also demolished when I was in high school and the Rosa Parks Memorial Library is now there.
A good bit of the places were made up in the episode, but telephone directory and bus tables are legit. These are the neighborhoods in the directory (and for funsies, I marked where I grew up).
I feel like the city of Montgomery is as much a character as all the historic people in the episode. Without that iconic view down Dexter Avenue from the bus stop, you don’t get to see Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was actually planned in the basement of that church, just a short walk from the bus stop where Rosa was arrested.
It’s like trying to tell the story of the Selma-to-Montgomery march without the unique architecture of the Edmund Pettus bridge or the Stand in the Schoolhouse door without the University of Alabama.
And a LOT of the tiny details were right: the bus itself, the bus tables, where Rosa worked, the arrest itself, etc. Even the fact that it was stupid dark at 5:30 p.m. in December.
I know the episode was filmed in South Africa, and it looks nothing like central Alabama. So hopefully this gives you an idea of what the rest of the city actually looked like.
