Call her “the woman who refused to get up,” but I’m sure Rosa Parks had no idea what her tired feet and frustrating treatment would lead to on December 1, 1955.
What became known as the Civil Rights movement was bound to start sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before blacks would reject all that “back of the bus” and “Whites Only” nonsense. In a country where they were paying taxes, too? Please. I’m surprised the movement didn’t hit America with full force 10-15 years earlier when black men were fighting for their country in WWII (see Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic).
December 1, 1955, was also the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted about a year. Blacks refused to ride the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, until November 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation on buses unconstitutional. Despite its embarrassing and often pathetic history, America is still, by far, the greatest country in the world, no matter what color you happen to be.
Parks and her husband Raymond didn’t have children, as far as I can tell from news accounts of her life. In a way, I suppose those she inspired to stand up to injustice were her offspring. Once people understand the power they have in a free country, the moral authority to demand justice, watch out. I once heard this line from a movie: “Change the way people think, and things will never be the same.”
Whatever her reasons that fateful day, I’m glad she decided to stay in her seat.
- Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
- Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92 (with video)
- Jim Crow Redux
- Truth Be Told
- Wikipedia
If you’ve blogged about Rosa Parks, link and trackback to this post, and I’ll link to yours. I heard that Haloscan is now compatible with WordPress; if not or you don’t have a trackback feature on your blog, use Simpletracks.
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Update (6:25 p.m.): And the last two links for the night are ShrinkWrapped, and one of my favorite reads, Discriminations. Linking will resume tomorrow morning. I’ll approve comments and trackbacks caught in the spam filter tomorrow, too. Thanks for reading and linking to LBC, and I hope you’ve bookmarked some of these new-to-you blogs. 
Previous obituaries: Nipsey Russell, Johnnie Cochran, Ossie Davis, Johnny Carson, Shirley Chisholm, Rick James, Ronald Reagan and Superman.
Update II (10/26): After Instapundit linked last night, several bloggers tracked back to this post, and some of the trackbacks were caught in the spam filter. Sorry about that. I know the frustration. The following links will be the last I’ll include in this post, but you may continue to trackback and comment. Thanks!
Publius Pundit, Tel-Chai Nation, The Moderate Voice, Parableman, D.C. Thornton, Area417, My Right Mind, Texas Xtreme, PolitaKid, and brining up the rear, John, the blogger who designed the header graphic on my business blog.
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“Despite its embarrassing and often pathetic history, America is still, by far, the greatest country in the world, no matter what color you happen to be.”
A gracious remark from a gracious lady. Thank you and well said.
s/Uncle Sam
I had breakfast at a working-class diner in rural Eastern North Carolina this morning. This part of the state parallels the deep south, both economically, with nearly sea-level bottom land growing cotton and tobacco, and socially.
The eight or so men lining the counter and swapping stories in good southern style were in their fifties, two of them black. Other customers, black and white, stopped by with greetings. The stories were of good prices for bad cars, the most recently injured coworkers.
Thank you, Rosa.
The incident on the bus was actually a planned protest–she wasn’t just an average woman who was tired and just didn’t want to give up her seat. It was part of a larger civil rights plan that they were creating.
Even so, MJ, it was still a fateful day.
I’ve considered mj’s information ever since I learned of it a few years ago, and have decided it is meaningless, however true it may be. It might be worth mentioning in passing in the introduction to a course on Rosa Parks, but that does not take away from the power of her actions. It may only call into question the *degree* of courage it required, since she might have known she would have the power of a large organization behind her. She was an effective focal point of white injustice and black political power – more power to her. She was also something of a hottie, IMHO.
And y’know what, today I have a new perspective on the angry young men who drape themselves across public transit bus and train seats, and glare at whitey as he walks up hoping for a seat. They somehow imagine that they’re actually doing something valuable for their people, as Rosa Parks undebatably did. I wish they would – do something valuable for their people, that is. “Emulating Rosa Parks” should mean something besides refusing to let a white guy have a sit down in the year 2005.
Thank you, Sister Rosa – you were the spark.
B
I was NOT criticizing Rosa Parks nor said that to diminish what she did–she was very brave! It took a lot of guts to do what she did–she went against a system that was totally against her. I just mentioned it because all the bios make it sound like it was just a coincidence that the movement was ignited after this incident, and she was a working gal who said, “enough is enough” because she was tired.
mj, thanks for the clarification. I hope it is clear I was talking about the usefulness of the information, and the way it is sometimes insinuated that it detracts from her achievement. Heck, the Rita Dove hagiography that LaShawn links makes ample mention of these facts.
I’m sorry if it seemed as if I was including you among the insinuators. I’ve struggled with them for years.
Please keep in mind the power of the past fifty years (save a month) since Rosa Parks threw the switch on the modern civil rights age. It has been a rich and important history of struggle and accomplishment.
The previous fifty years began with Theodore Roosevelt bringing Booker T. Washington into the White House as an honored guest. It included the rise of jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, the Scottsboro Boys, lynchings, and a mass migration from the south to the north.
Rosa Parks was certainly the pivot point in the social history of the 20th century.
I’m so glad to see you post on this topic.
Ms. Parks selfless act of quiet courage in the face of racism is an example we should all aspire to.
Rosa Parks rest in peace. Whatever the background to her courageous refusal to stand, she started something big. I remember being impressed as a child watching the TV news footage of all those people walking instead of riding the bus.
La Shawn:
As a “Rich White Male”, I have most of the same memories of Rosa Parks as everyone else does.
No doubt Rosa Parks was NOT the first Black woman who refused to move to the back of the bus. Likewise, WG Morton was not the first doctor to administer ether anesthesia in 1846.
But Parks, an ordinary person, rehearsed and staged an event that DID get a lot of attention and WAS a major inspiration to many people.
Likewise, WG Morton rehearsed using ether on animals, colleagues, and even on himself. So when he staged a public anesthetic at Mass General Hospital in Boston on Oct 16, 1846, he introdued anesthesia to the world.
My most recent memory of Parks was the shameless man who sued a rapper using the copyrighted name “Rosa Parks” – “on behalf of Rosa Parks”.
In fact, at the time, Rosa Parks was suffering Alzheimer’s disease and was in no shape to sue anyone.
Much has been said about “staging”, but that’s how things are done.
Rosa Parks RIP
Ode to a Unique Champion
You said you weren’t physically tired that day
Like the popular story your historic act declares
You said you refused to give up the seat you paid for
Because of the injustice you experienced most everywhere
Sorry, It wouldn’t accept my trackback ping from Blogger…
I can’t figure out this trackback stuff, too old I guess. At elgintyrell.com todays photorial is dedicated to Mrs. Parks entitled, “From the back of the bus to the front of the line”….Welcome home Miss Parks.
In a truly great country it wouldn’t be “politically incorrect” to discuss the details of this particular event (planned political action) or to note Rosa Parks’ politics (socialist). Rather, we could feel free to place Rosa Parks properly in the context of her time and appreciate her actions as both a call for civil rights AND for an economic system that the majority of Americans do now reject.
One of the saddest moments I’ve ever seen in movies comes in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” if I remember correctly. A black man is trying to straighten out a teen who’s behaving poorly. He finally tells the teen something like, “Rosa Parks did not get on that bus so you could act like this!”
And the teen replies, “Who’s Rosa Parks?”
This is a day to answer that question for a new generation.
Aldon Morris–in “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement”:
“In the 1940s Mrs. Parks had refused several times to comply with segregation rules on the buses. In the early 1940s Mrs. Parks was ejected from a bus for failing to comply. The very same bus driver who ejected her that time was the one who had her arrested on December 1, 1955…She began serving as secretary for the local NAACP in 1943 and still held that post when arrested in 1955…In the early 1940s Mrs. Parks organized the local NAACP Youth Council…During the 1950s the youth in this organization attempted to borrow books from a white library. They also took rides and sat in the front seats of segregated buses, then returned to the Youth Council to discuss their acts of defiance with Mrs. Parks.”
http://dailykos.com/story/2005/10/25/34313/055
Rosa Parks was proof that anyone can make a difference. She didn’t wait for someone else to speak up. She didn’t wait for someone else to act. She demonstrated tremendous courage, and through her courage created a steamroller of change that impacted our country greatly. Thank you, Rosa. We mourn your passing.
LaShawn,
In 1875 the Republican Party in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which guaranteed the rights of all African Americans equal access to all public services and facilities. This was the vision of the Republican Party from the very beginning. It was founded in 1854 as the anti-slavery party and it has always been the party of civil rights.
Unfortunately, a rogue Supreme Court declared the act to be unconstitutional, effectively derailing further Republican attempts to create an equal and just society. The Democratic Party in the southern states embarked upon a pogrom against African Americans in an effort to deny them their civil rights and to keep them out of the political process. The Democrats invented poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK which became the terrorist wing of the party. Through these vehicles the Democrats succeeded in denying African Americans equal access and civil rights for the next century.
Had the Republican vision been carried forward to completion, Rosa Parks would not have had to challenge Democrat racism on that bus in 1955. She would have been raised in an environment where her civil rights would have been enshrined in law some 80 years prior.
Below are the first 2 paragraphs of the Civil Rights Act of 1875:
“Whereas it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law: Therefore,
Be it enacted, That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”
Imagine where our country would be right now if this Act had not be struck down?
God bless Rosa Parks. We tried and we were defeated. I am sorry that we failed you. I am sorry that your rights were not guaranteed 80 years before when they should have been.
Sincerely,
Laurence
a friend blog on her too.
http://mudpond.blogspot.com/2005/10/rosa-parks-dies.html
Here is a link to my post.
Mrs. Parks was well aware of what would come in the wake of her refusal to give up her seat. She was an active member of the NAACP and there was a plan in place that was the Montgomery Bus Boycott.It was the leadership of a young African American preacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others who forged the plan that would bring the racist in Montgomery to heel with respect to public accomodations. “Power,” as Frederick Douglass said to the Seneca Falls convention of 1846, “concedes nothing, not without a protest or demonstration of resolve to oppose it.”
In thinking of Rosa Parks and the struggle for freedom in this country, I can’t help but reflect upon the hypocrisy inherent when one black person tells another: “you aren’t black!†I’ve heard that I an not Black enough because I don’t handle the proper slang, and because I don’t limit the women I will date to one ethnicity. I hear kids regularly taunted as “trying to be white†because they are bookworms or like rock music. I wonder if on a bus ride just before Rosa Parks’ renown experience, if two young blacks had been seated in the fron of the bus and told to move for the sake of two white riders, and one told the driver of the bus “He doesn’t have to move ‘cause he isn’t really black; he listens to the wrong music.†if that driver would’ve immediately stopped and apologized for the misunderstanding.
The passing of Rosa Parks was a poignant reminder about the power of one.
One person sitting down for moral authority
One person standing up for truth
One woman
Rosa Parks
Prior to Rosa defying the Jim Crow bus rules in Mongomery, several other had, including MLK’s predessessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the unherolded hero, Vernon Johns.
You will really love how Dexter’s board members responded to their PhD pastor getting arrested for upsetting the crackers: they got very mad at him. In deference to their anger, he did stop defying the bus rule, but only with a new action that upset them even more: he started walking, rather than riding the bus (either refusing to buy a car, or to drive his), and preaching (quite unsuccessfully) that everybody else should follow him, with this truly scandelous proposal: if all blacks saved and pooled their bus money, the cracker-owned private bus line would belly-up, and have to sell their fleet (at fire sale prices!)… to, guess who?
This idea was much more revolutionary than MLK’s tamer proposal: boycott until the cracker bus company faces bankrupcy, then end the boycott (and save the cracker-owned line) if the crackers agree to end the Jim Crow seating rule. Imagine if the black folks instead of winning the right to sit where they pleased on a honkey-owned bus, they instead started owning the buses, which honkies had to pay black folks in order ride!
A similar problem attended the Jackie Robinson “integration” of MLB. What the black folks really wanted was to have their black-owned and -managed teams absored into MBL as expansion teams, with black and white owners buying and selling each others’ players. Instead, people like Jackie sold-out that plan, got themselves individually richer, at the expense the many more black players, managers, coaches, consessioneers, accountants, etc., who lost jobs when the Negro League collapse due to star players getting plucked into MLB.
I don’t view the Mongomery Bus Boycott, or the Jackie Robinson story, as quite the victories that they should have been.
Not a plant, although it doesn’t matter.
From her obituary in the New York Times:
Over the years myth tended to obscure the truth about Mrs. Parks. One legend had it that she was a cleaning woman with bad feet who was too tired to drag herself to the rear of the bus. Another had it that she was a “plant” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The truth, as she later explained, was that she was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to the byzantine rules, some codified as law and others passed on as tradition, that reinforced the position of blacks as something less than full human beings.
“She was fed up,” said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend and executive director of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. “She was in her 40’s. She was not a child. There comes a point where you say, ‘No, I’m a full citizen, too. This is not the way I should be treated.’ “
I read today that she said the ‘tired feet’ thing wasn’t a factor on that historical day. It apparently was some urban legend that got made up along the way. But small matter. She’s a darling, brave lady and has her place in history. Rest in peace, Rosa.
Another Titan gone. You will be missed Rosa….
I have a question as a Christian. Can someone point out to me where the Bible condones – Civil Disobedience? As is well-recorded in history and spoken here, after Ms. Parks’ arrest black folk decided to boycott – why wasn’t that done from the jump?
ZIPLA,
You ask an interesting question. It’s not so much the civil disobedience that comes to mind (in regards to the bible)…
it’s the unholy alliances with feminist, homosexuals and others that perplexes me. Yes “we” gained but were hearts really changed in the process (and was the destruction of the black family …. shoot THE FAMILY PERIOD really worth it)??
I think we forgot to read the fine print on the contract.
Just some thoughts
Renee,
Exactly! Can you clarify for me – “what we gained”? Yes I understand that the Boycott was a boon to the Civil Rights Movement but, we lost more because we began to look to the Government to solve our woes versus leaning on the Lord and crying out to him. Not to say that we shouldn’t have “voiced” our displeasures against the violations of our Constitutional Rights.
ZIPLA – What happened with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (and others like it) offer an excellent example of civil disobedience. They were obedient up until the point king Nebuchadnezzar attempted to make them worship someone other than God. They then refused. What we can draw from that and its supporting examples is that we are to obey the laws of man until the come into conflict with the clear will of God.
I myself wrestled with this for a while. Looking at individual acts of the civil rights movement for themselves, and asking if they were supported by scriptural precedent. Some were, some weren’t. To be honest, although I am glad that this event occured, I can’t call it on this one.
So yes, certain civil disobedience is evidenced in Scripture, in obedience to God. We just have to be very careful of our reasons for it.
La Shawn,
I think it would be helpful to link to Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, which is a critical document not only in the history of the civil rights movement, but to non-violent protest. It is in many places, here is one:
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Much discussion could be had taking this document and understanding Rosa Parks.
Matt
La Roi,
Thanks for reminding me of where civil disobedience would be condoned biblically. So I guess my question should have been is Rosa Parks’ actions condoned in the bible?
“Despite its embarrassing and often pathetic history, America is still, by far, the greatest country in the world, no matter what color you happen to be.” Exactly, La Shawn.
Reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” God helps those who help themselves.
Renee, Mark and Zipla,
One seminary professor suggested that following the principles and processes used for the “just war” concept would be a one way to approach whether a specific act of “civil disobedience” was justified.
The end of an era has come. Rosa Parks, the celebrated matriarch of the black civil rights movement has died at age 92. Check LaShawn Barber’s commentary on her life and works.
I just heard something else today. John Carlson on his Seattle radio show told how Rosa Parks was robbed about 10 yrs. ago by some druggie looking for drug money. When all she gave him was $52, he beat her up! What kinda jerk does this to a defenseless 81 yr old woman?? Apparently he was black, too. He blamed it on ‘the drugs’. I wonder why this incident was not widely publicized? Poor Rosa!
That’s true. I remember when it happened. The kind of criminal idiot who’d do that isn’t a man; he’s an immoral thug who should be rotting in jail. – Admin
Rosa Parks did the south a tremendous service to both blacks everywhere and whites in the south. Her courage inspired blacks everywhere to take control of their lives away from whites and assume the full role of citizen. It freed the whites of the south of living an obscene life of cruelty to their fellow man and we are glad to be free of it. Unfortunately it did nothing for the whites of the north who used the blatant wrong-doing of southern whites to deflect attention from their own. As a result we still have racial hatred in Detroit, Howard Beaches in New York City and northern unions virtually closed to blacks.
One seminary professor suggested that following the principles and processes used for the “just war†concept would be a one way to approach whether a specific act of “civil disobedience†was justified.
Comment by Evon — 10.25.05 @ 7:01 pm
~What are those processes?
Rest in peace. This seemingly simple act of defiance inpsired generations of good people, black and white, to confront racism. Godspeed and God bless, Ms. Parks. We are a better nation for you and your simple act.
Thanks for the post on this subject La Shawn.
I think it is important to note that although most Americans today herald Ms. Parker’s courageous stand. At the time when all of this was happening she was considered a large number of Americans to be a trouble making radical. Even some of the more conservative of her own race. This is quite similar to the way Martin Luther King Jr. as well as Muhammad Ali. were viewed as opposed to how they are now viewed. It is amazing how time and outcome can transform the minds of people. I might add the popularity of a stance is not always the measure of the worthiness of a goal.
Great post LaShawn. God bless Rosa Parks and what she did that day. It brought about justice that was long overdue!!
Jim C
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