The “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 5, 1955, was born on this day in 1913.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was two. Parks’ mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth.
Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street, and listened in fear as lynchings occurred near her home. The family moved to Montgomery; Parks attended various segregated schools in Montgomery before attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes. Shortly after starting secondary school, Parks left to take care of her grandmother who was sick. She married barber Raymond Parks in 1932, aged 19 and the couple joined the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Montgomery chapter where she would eventually serve as secretary.
Parks is famously known for her refusal to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. standing in the aisle on December 1, 1955.The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats.
This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.
As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their seats.
The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.
Three of the other black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested.
The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail. 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 not only appealed her conviction, she formally challenged the legality of racial segregation.
Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 , the day of Parks' trial, in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/montgomery-bus-boycott.html , as it came to be known, was a huge success, lasting for 381 days and ending with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transit systems to be unconstitutional. And Rosa's act of dignified defiance and courage triggered a wave of protest that reverberated throughout the United States.
Contrary to some reports, Parks wasn’t physically tired and was able to leave her seat. She refused, on principle, to surrender her seat because of her race, which was the law in Montgomery at the time.
The NAACP realized it had the right person to work with, as it battled against the system of segregation in Montgomery. It also worked with another group of local leaders to stage a one-day boycott of passenger buses, when Parks went to court.The group expanded to include other people, chose a name, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and planned an extended boycott.
But the MIA also needed a public spokesman with leadership qualities to
make their fight into a wide-ranging cause.Their pick was a little-known
pastor who had recently arrived in Montgomery: Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.
With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.
Rosa for many years after would
continue as an activist in the movement for the rights of exploited
people.Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the
boycott,and after losing her tailoring job and receiving death threats.
Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to
Detroit, where Parks’ brother resided.In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.
With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.
In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her
support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography,
“Rosa Parks: My Story.”
She remained an active member of the NAACP and became an administrative
aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. a
post she held until her 1988 retirement..
The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute Of Self-Development was established
in 1987 to offer job training for black youth.
In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the
highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States. The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) also sponsors an annual Rosa
Parks Freedom Award.
Her husband, brother and mother
all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. At the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.
When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation’s history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. At the time, she was only the 30th person accorded that honor. She was the first woman to receive the honor, and her coffin sat on the catafalque built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.
Rosa passed away October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. City officials in
Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front
seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor
of Parks until her funeral. Today Rosa Parks’ legacy continues to live
on in honor of her historic acts of courage. Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1,
have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in the U.S. states of
California and Ohio. Her monumental efforts were recognized when she won a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.
In 2000, a library and museum in Montgomery were dedicated to Rosa Parks. The Rosa Parks Museum https://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/ houses
a replica of the bus that sparked the civil rights activists to boycott
an important mode of transportation. The library and children's wing
not only tell the story of Parks to its hundreds of visitors, but also
those of Nixon, Gray, and Colvin. There is a "time travel" machine that
transports the visitors from the 1800s to the Jim Crowe era and to 1950s
Montgomery.
Let us also think what would happen if a Palestinian Rosa Parks chose to sit on a segregated West Bank Bus, Palestinians in the present moment are unable to travel freely in their own country - they even have to have permits to enter Jerusalem.
"Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust," Martin Luther King said "All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority."
Like Rosa Parks before her, Palestinians are struggling against unjust laws, in their case the injustice of a 50-year military occupation that denies Palestinians their land, right to travel and self-determination. Israel maintains an apartheid system of democracy for Israeli Jews - and discrimination against Israelis of colour - second-class citizenship for Israeli citizens of Arab descent, and dispossession and disenfranchisement for Palestinian Arabs in the territories.
We need more brave souls like Rosa Parks, because as history has shown.it is possible for a single person to engage in an act of resistance against oppression that can park the seed of change. On this day, Parks would have been 107 years old. As Rosa Parks once said, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
The Neville Brothers - Sister Rosa
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark
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