Elvis and the Colonel met with RCA executives, including president Larry Kanaga and publicity director Anne Fulchino.
A photo shoot by William 'Popsie' Randolf had been arranged with photos of Elvis and the Colonel, Elvis and Steve Sholes and Elvis and fellow RCA recording artists Eddy Arnold which appear below.
Eddie happened to be in New York for a recording session.
But that's not the only reason the two are photographed together. RCA released 2 demo LPs on this very day with Eddie Arnold and Elvis Presley featuring on them. So technically 1955 was the first time Elvis appeared on an LP.
The photo's are taken in RCA's Twenty-Fourth Street studio.
Four of the 'posed' mock recording shots will end up being used on the back of Elvis' first album.
Elvis is genuinely singing in the mock shots, though probably not too seriously and there is a mic there - everything in place except a tape rolling.
Whilst these iconic photos of Elvis were being taken on the eve of his role in changing the future, another act was taking place which also changed the future.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
MONTGOMERY AL (1955) On this date in 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks, a black seemstress in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for not giving up her seat on a city bus to a white rider. The Jim Crow laws of the time required that black persons sit in the back of the bus. Other laws provided separate waiting rooms, water fountains, restrooms, and schools. Rosa Parks was arrested, triggering a bus boycott which lasted 381 days. In November 1956, The United States Supreme Court declared Alabama and Montgomery's segregation laws unconstitutional. An injunction was issued and on December 21, 1956, Dr Martin Luther King and a friend rode in the front seat of a Montgomery city bus. Legal Segregation ended.
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery boycott, changed America, but she was not the first black to risk freedom to end segregation. Among the many who risked arrest and imprisonment was Lieutenant Jackie Robinson, who, in 1944, refused to move to the back of an officially non-segregated bus at Fort Hood Texas. He was arrrested, court martialled and later acquitted, eventually becoming the first black man to break the major league "color barrier". Jackie played his final baseball game just six weeks before the Supreme Court outlawed segregation.[/quote]
A little bit more detail as to the circumstances and how events evolved:
On Thursday evening December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress for a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, Rosa Parks boards a city bus to go home.
Tired as she is, Mrs. Parks walks past the first few — mostly empty — rows of seats marked "Whites Only." It's against the law for an African American like her to sit in these seats. She finally settles for a spot in the middle of the bus. Black people are allowed to sit in this section as long as no white person is standing. Though Rosa Parks hates the segregation laws, and has been fighting for civil rights at the NAACP for more than 10 years, until today she has never been one to break rules.
The bus continues along its route. After several more stops the bus is full. The driver notices that all the seats in the "Whites Only" section are now taken, and that more white people have just climbed aboard. He orders the people in Mrs. Parks's row to move to the back of the bus, where there are no open seats. No one budges at first. But when the driver barks at the black passengers a second time, they all get up. . . . . except for Rosa Parks.