James F. Blake

Born on April 14, 1912, Blake was drafted into the Army on December 23, 1943, at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama.

[3] On June 15, 1955, while driving a bus in Montgomery, Blake tried to run off the road a car driven by Lucille Times.

When she stopped to run an errand in Montgomery, he parked his bus across the street and proceeded to yell at her and they exchanged epithets and started fighting.

[4] Furious, Ms. Times contacted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the bus company but received no response.

[5] In 1955, Montgomery's black leaders were preparing to make a legal case against racial discrimination on the city bus system.

Rosa Parks was selected to be the central figure in a challenge to the Jim Crow laws which supported segregation.

He did not like to say much to the media or his family about the Parks matter, such as in 1989 when he was approached by a reporter of the The Washington Post and yelled about wanting to close the book on the matter because of the "lies" printed about him while alleging that black people had called his house for weeks after the Parks incident.

Both the children's pastor of the church and Blake's wife defended him upon his death for his virtues as a churchgoing family man.