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Rosa Parks may not have borne any
children, but she has become known as
the mother of the civil-rights movement
because of a solitary
nonviolent act of defiance:
On December 1, 1955, she refused
to give her bus seat to a
white man in Montgomery,
Alabama, as was required by
law. She knew the bus driver
was the same man who had
kicked her off a bus 12 years
earlier because she wouldn’t
re-board through the back door after
paying her fare. “I was not tired physically,”
she explained. “No, the only
tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
The soft-spoken 42-year-old seamstress
was not naïve about her possible
fate if she kept her seat. Rosa Parks and
her husband, Raymond, were active in
the Montgomery NAACP. They knew
that some black people had been
beaten—even killed—for breaking the
discriminatory bus laws.
Rosa Parks explained that she “could
not go to the back of the bus” when she
thought about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old
black teen from Chicago who had
been brutally murdered in Mississippi
that August after he reportedly whistled
at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman.
Emmett was the only child of Mamie
Till, a widow. Photos of the boy’s disfigured
corpse in a glass-topped casket
were published around the world.
A few weeks before Rosa Parks refused
to budge from her bus seat, a jury
acquitted Roy Bryant (Carolyn’s husband)
and his half brother, J. W. Milam,
of killing Emmett, even though they
admitted they had kidnapped him.
When the trial was over, Look magazine
published an interview in which these
men described how they murdered the
boy. In 2005, The Untold Story of Emmett
Louis Till was released in theaters
(www.emmetttillstory.com).
After Rosa Parks was arrested, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., a young minister
who had recently moved to
Montgomery, became leader of a new
group that was later known as the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. Black people
constituted 70 percent of
bus riders in Montgomery.
Thousands of them supported
a 381-day boycott of Montgomery
buses, until the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that the
city’s segregation law was
unconstitutional. In 1954, in
the historic Brown v. Board of Education,
the Court had banned segregated
education in public schools.
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During February (Black History Month),
many students will learn about the
courageous woman who started a revolution
by sitting still. Rosa McCauley
Parks was born on February 4, 1913,
and died last October 24, shortly before
the 50th anniversary of her historic
bus ride.
She received numerous honors during
her lifetime, including both the
Congressional Gold Medal and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. When
she died, she became the first woman
whose body was allowed to lie in honor
in the Capitol rotunda. And plans are
under way for a statue of her in the
U.S. Capitol.
But there’s a negative side to her
story, too. Rosa and Raymond Parks
lost their jobs and received so many
threats in Montgomery after her sit-in
that they moved to Detroit. And, following
her death, there are reports of a
bitter feud over her estate.
But the real legacy of Rosa Parks goes
beyond awards and material wealth:
It’s the example she set. Cardinal
Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington,
D.C., wrote in the Catholic Standard newspaper that Rosa Parks taught us “that we must never allow any person
to be treated as inferior or without
respect” and that “a simple, ordinary
person with courage and a sense of her
own dignity as a child of God could
make such an enormous difference in
the modern history of our country.”
Not Taking This Anymore
Many of us have been taught to control
our emotions, especially anger. Sometimes,
we need to be reminded that
justifiable anger can be good, especially
when there is gross injustice. Without
anger, evil has no opposition.
One of the most memorable movie
quotes is Peter Finch’s Oscar-winning
portrayal of Howard Beale in the film
Network, when he shouts, “My life has
value!” Then he screams, “I’m as mad as
hell, and I’m not going to take this
anymore!”
Rosa Parks may not have screamed
out loud on the bus that day in 1955,
but I imagine she clenched her jaw and
thought, My life has value and I’m not
going to take this anymore!
There are many well-known people
like her whose acts of defiance have
led to reforms, such as Susan B.
Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi and Oskar
Schindler. But we also need to recognize
the courage of others whose names are
largely unknown.
Consider, for example, the first victims
of clergy sex abuse who broke
their silence and influenced others to
tell their stories. They were joined by
supporters who weren’t “going to take
this anymore.” Their actions led to
reforms that, hopefully, will prevent
further incidents.
Let these and others like them influence
us to have the courage to demand
respect for ourselves and others by
knowing when to sit still, when to speak
out and when to get angry. —M.J.D.
For more information about Rosa
Parks, see the Web site of the Rosa
and Raymond Parks Institute for Self
Development (www.rosaparks.org). |
