MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – According to her family, another civil rights legend has died in Montgomery. Lucille Times died late Monday night, her nephew Daniel Nichols confirmed. She was 100.
Six months before Rosa Parks took her place on a Montgomery bus in 1955, the Times got into a fist fight with the same bus driver on the racially segregated bus route in June. She claimed he tried to pull her car off the road and confronted him with it.
Times was not arrested, but the ordeal caused her to begin her own boycott of the buses and she made it her business to change things. Later, when the Montgomery bus boycott began, she continued what she had been doing for months; Pick up waiting black passengers she saw at bus stops.
Parks’ arrest in December would propel her into history and make her name synonymous with the struggle for civil rights. But the Times remained relatively obscure to the masses for more than half a century, despite being locally known.
Times and her husband Charlie attended the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 and then let 18 people of all races from across the country stay in their home. The couple had long been business owners in Montgomery and remained committed to the community.
They were members of the NAACP, and Nichols said the couple were founding members of several organizations and clubs.
You were honored in 2011 with the dedication of a historical marker in front of your longtime home. The house they have lived in since 1939 has been on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage since 2007.
In February 2017, she won the Unsung Hero Award in Montgomery for her efforts, but it wasn’t until later in the year that her longtime friend, former Alabama Attorney General Troy King, posted a touching video about her on social media that was seen within days more than a million times.
King had heard the Times stories of marching from Selma to Montgomery, welcoming protesters to sleep in their Montgomery home, from the couple’s Times Cafe, which regularly serves Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleagues in the planning and execution of the Montgomery applauded bus boycott.
At the time of King’s video, The Times was 96 years old and had difficulty speaking after a stroke that paralyzed her vocal cords. But she was excited to share her story, and the reveal led her to host a “meet and greet” at the Rosa Parks Museum.
As recently as February, the Times was the focus of a Black History Month commemoration in Montgomery when organizers held a celebration at the historic ED Nixon-Lucille Times Community Garden on Emerson Street. The event included live paintings, plantings, and performances by dancers from Alabama State University.
A public viewing will take place on Saturday from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Phillips-Riley Funeral Home in Montgomery. Funeral services will be held on Sunday at 1 p.m. by St. Jude Catholic Church, under the direction of Father Andrew Jones. The burial takes place in the Oakwood Annex Cemetery.
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