ROSA PARKS
G'day folks,
Welcome to a post on an amazing woman who sat down so she could stand up for herself and others - ROSA PARKS.
Rosa
Louise McCauley Parks (1913 – 2005) was an African American civil rights
activist and seamstress whom the U.S. Congress dubbed the "Mother of the
Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement".
In 1900,
Montgomery had passed a city ordinance for the purpose of segregating passengers
by race. Conductors were given the power to assign seats to accomplish that
purpose; however, no passengers would be required to move or give up their seat
and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time
and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the practice of
requiring black riders to move whenever there were no white only seats left.
Parks is
famous for her refusal on December 1, 1955 to obey bus driver James Blake's
demand that she relinquish her seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest and
trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial
segregation in history, and launched Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the organizers of the
boycott, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Her role in American
history earned her an iconic status in American culture, and her actions have
left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
After a
day at work at Montgomery Fair department store, Parks boarded the Cleveland
Avenue bus at around 6 p.m., Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown
Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back
seats reserved for blacks in the "colored" section, which was near
the middle of the bus and directly behind the ten seats reserved for white
passengers. Initially, she had not noticed that the bus driver was the same
man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled
along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The
bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white
passengers boarded.
So,
following standard practice, bus driver Blake noted that the front of the bus
was filled with white passengers and there were two or three men standing, and
thus moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that
four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white
passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling the events of the day, Parks
said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his
hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my
body like a quilt on a winter night."
By Parks'
account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me
have those seats." Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver
wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he
says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't."
The black man sitting next to her gave up his seat. Parks moved, but toward the
window seat; she did not get up to move to the newly repositioned colored
section .Blake then said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded,
"I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to
arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize, a 1987 public
television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw
me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm
not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the
police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.'"
During a
1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after
her arrest, when asked why she had decided not to vacate her bus seat, Parks
said, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a
human being and a citizen of Montgomery, Alabama."
She also
detailed her motivation in her autobiography, My Story
“ People
always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't
true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the
end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me
as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of
giving in.”
When
Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the
officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us
around?" The officer's response as she remembered it was, "I don't
know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said,
"I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time
that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind."
Parks was
charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the
Montgomery City code, even though she technically had not taken up a white-only
seat—she had been in a coloured section. E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr bailed
Parks out of jail the evening of December 1.
That
evening, Nixon conferred with Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson
about Parks' case. Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council (WPC),
stayed up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus
boycott. The Women's Political Council was the first group to officially
endorse the boycott.
On
Sunday, December 4, 1955, plans for the Montgomery Bus Boycott were announced
at black churches in the area, and a front-page article in The Montgomery
Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, attendees
unanimously agreed to continue the boycott until they were treated with the
level of courtesy they expected, until black drivers were hired, and until
seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis.
Four days
later, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local
ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was found guilty and fined $10,
plus $4 in court costs. Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged
the legality of racial segregation. In a 1992 interview with National Public
Radio's Lynn Neary, Parks recalled:
“I did
not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had
paid for. It was just time... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to
express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to
get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I
had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we
had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that
kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became. ”
On
Monday, December 5, 1955, after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of
16 to 18 people gathered at the Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to discuss boycott
strategies. The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead the
boycott effort if it were to continue. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy suggested the
name "Montgomery Improvement Association" (MIA). The name was
adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its members elected as their president a
relative newcomer to Montgomery, a young and mostly unknown minister of Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
That
Monday night, 50 leaders of the African American community gathered to discuss
the proper actions to be taken in response to Parks' arrest. E.D. Nixon said,
"My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!" Parks was the
ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws. While
the 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, unwed and pregnant, had been deemed
unacceptable to be the center of a civil rights mobilization, King stated that,
"Mrs. Parks, on the other hand, was regarded as one of the finest citizens
of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest
citizens of Montgomery." Parks was securely married and employed,
possessed a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy.
The day
of Parks' trial — Monday, December 5, 1955 — the WPC distributed the 35,000
leaflets. The handbill read, "We are…asking every Negro to stay off the
buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial . . . You can afford to stay
out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please,
children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off
the buses Monday."
It rained
that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in
carpools, while others traveled in black-operated cabs that charged the same
fare as the bus, 10 cents. Most of the remainder of the 40,000 black commuters
walked, some as far as 20 miles. In the end, the boycott lasted for 382 days.
Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit
company's finances, until the law requiring segregation on public buses was
lifted.
Some
segregationists retaliated with terrorism. Black churches were burned or
dynamited. Martin Luther King's home was bombed in the early morning hours of
January 30, 1956, and E.D. Nixon's home was also attacked. However, the black
community's bus boycott marked one of the largest and most successful mass
movements against racial segregation. It sparked many other protests, and it
catapulted King to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.
Through
her role in sparking the boycott, Rosa Parks played an important part in
internationalizing the awareness of the plight of African Americans and the
civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that
Parks' arrest was the precipitating factor, rather than the cause, of the
protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices….
Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes
that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries
out, 'I can take it no longer.'"
The
Montgomery bus boycott was also the inspiration for the bus boycott in the
township of Alexandria, Eastern Cape of South Africa which was one of the key
events in the radicalization of the black majority of that country under the
leadership of the African National Congress.
Rosa Parks after Boycott
After the
boycott, Rosa Parks became an icon and leading spokesperson of the civil rights
movement in US. Immediately after the boycott, she lost her job in a department
store. For many years she worked as a seamstress.
In 1965,
she was hired by African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. She worked
as his secretary until her retirment in 1988. Conyers remarked of Rosa Parks.
"You
treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene — just a
very special person [CNN,2004]
Awards
Some of
the awards Rosa Parks received.
- She was selected to be one of the people to meet Nelson Mandela on his release from prison in 1994.
- In 1996, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton
- In 1997, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal - the highest award of Congress.
Death and funeral
Rosa
Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of ninety-two on October 24,
2005.
Clancy's comment: Go, Rosa! Love ya work!
I'm ...
Think about this!
Pax vobiscum, Rosa!
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