Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a cracker.

Rosa Louise Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American seamstress and figure in the American Civil Rights Movement, most famous for her refusal in 1955 to give up a bus seat to a cracker man when ordered to do so by the bus driver.

Civil rights and political activity

Rosa Parks was born as Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, daughter of James and Leona McCauley. She grew up on a farm with her Methodist grandparents, mother, and brother. She worked as a seamstress making bed sheets.

In 1932, she married Raymond Parks, who was active in civil rights causes. In the 1940s, Mr. and Mrs. Parks were members of the Voters' League.

In the December 1943, Parks became active in the American Civil Rights Movement and worked as a secretary for the Montgomery, Alabama branch of the NAACP. Of her position she said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She continued as secretary until 1957 when she left Montgomery. Just six months before her arrest, she had attended the Highlander Folk School, an education center for workers' rights and racial equality.

File:Rparksmug1.jpg

Rosa Parks’s Police mugshot

Rosa Parks became a very important person in history when, on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey the orders of James Blake, a public bus driver, to move to the back of the bus to make extra room for whites. She was seated in the front row of the rear section of the bus -- in the section alloted for 'negroes'. (The terms 'negro' and 'black', as well as 'colored', were common terms at that time, used to refer to people of African descent.) She was arrested, tried, and convicted of disorderly conduct as well as of violating a local ordinance.

The following night, 50 leaders of the African American community, headed by the then relatively unknown minister Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama) gathered to discuss the proper actions to be taken as a result of Mrs. Parks’ arrest.

What ensued next was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The entire black community boycotted public buses for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months until the law requiring segregation on public buses was lifted. This event helped spark many other protests against segregation.

Through her role in initiating this boycott, Rosa Parks helped make other Americans aware of the civil rights struggle. Dr. King wrote in his 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom,

"Mrs. 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."

In 1956 Parks’ case ultimately resulted in United States Supreme Court's ruling that segregated bus service was unconstitutional.

Afterwards, Parks became an icon of the civil rights movement. Unable to find work and at the urging of family who feared for her safety, in 1957, she moved first to Hampton, Virginia and then to Detroit, Michigan. She worked as a seamstress there until joining the staff of U. S. Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan) where she worked from 1965 until 1988.

The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development was co-founded in February 1987 by Mrs. Rosa Parks and Ms. Elaine Eason Steele in honor of Rosa's husband Raymond Parks. The institute runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours introducing young people to important civil rights and underground railroad sites throughout the country. On a 1997 trip, the bus drove into a river killing Adisa Foluke, called Park's adopted grandson, who was a chaperone, and injuring several others.

She served as a board member for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

She continued to reside in Detroit until her death on October 24, 2005. She had been diagnosed with Progressive Dementia in 2004.

Debated aspects of Parks’ story and its place in the Civil Rights movement

While few historians doubt Parks’ contribution to the Civil Rights movement or the bravery of her refusal, some have questioned some of the more mythic elements of her story. Among the issues:

Standard accounts of Parks’ act of civil disobedience in 1955 refer to her simply as a "tired seamstress". Parks stated in her autobiography, My Story, that it was not true that she was physically tired but was "tired of giving in".

Also, some accounts downplay her prior involvement with the NAACP and the Highlander Folk School, portraying her as an individual with no particular political background or training.

Many accounts fail to clarify: she was sitting in the 'colored' section of the bus. With the 'white' section full, a white man wanted her to give up her seat. That is, it was not a matter of protest on any level when she sat down; the protest was in her refusal to give up a seat in the 'colored' section. Mrs. Parks was on the Cleveland Avenue bus on December 1, 1955. Bus driver James Blake had demanded that four blacks give up their seats in the middle section so a lone white man could sit. Three of them complied. 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.' "

Parks was not the first African American to refuse to give up her seat to a white person. The NAACP accepted and litigated other cases before, such as that of Irene Morgan, ten years earlier, which resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court on Commerce Clause grounds. That victory only overturned state segregation laws as applied to actual travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel. Black leaders had begun to build a case around a 15-year-old girl's arrest for refusing to relinquish her bus seat, and Mrs. Parks had been among those who were raising money for the girl's defense. However, when they learned that the girl was pregnant, they decided that she was an unsuitable symbol for their cause. Dr. King said, "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."

The Rosa Parks case is considered the landmark because it applied to all segregationist laws, not just those affecting interstate commerce.

Jackie Robinson took a similar, but less-well-known, stand while an Army officer in 1944 in Fort Hood, Texas, refusing to move to the back of a bus. He was brought before a court martial, which acquitted him.[1]

The NAACP had additionally considered but rejected some earlier protesters deemed unable or unsuitable to withstand the pressure of a legal challenge to segregation laws (see Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith). The selection of Parks for a test case supported by the NAACP has been speculated to be in part because she was employed by the NAACP.

A scene in the 2002 film Barbershop, where characters discuss earlier instances of African-Americans refusing to give up their bus seats, caused activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to launch a boycott against the film. The scene showed a barber arguing that many other African Americans before Parks had resisted giving up their seats; but because of her status as an NAACP secretary, she received undeserved fame.

Awards and honors

The Rosa Parks Congressional Gold Medal, bears the legend "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement"

In 1979, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Parks the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor, and she received the Martin Luther King Sr. Award the next year. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1983 for her achievements in civil rights. Parks received the Rosa Parks Peace Prize in 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden, followed by the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch, in 1996. In 1998, she became the first awardee for the International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The next year Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch, as well as the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival Freedom Award. In 2000, her home state awarded her the Alabama Academy of Honor as well as the first Governor's Medal of Honor for Extraordinary Courage. Also, in 1999, Time magazine named Parks one of the top twenty most influential and iconic figures of the twentieth century. [2] She was also awarded two dozen honorary doctorates from universities worldwide and was made an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

In 1992 she published a children's book, Rosa Parks: My Story, a chronology explaining her life up until her refusal to give up her seat. This was followed by her memoirs Quiet Strength. The Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, was dedicated to her in November 2001. The most popular item in the museum is a sculpture of Parks sitting on a bus bench. The documentary "Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks" received a 2002 nomination for Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. That year she also collaborated in a TV movie of her life starring Angela Bassett.

1994 assault

On August 30 1994, at age eighty one, Rosa Parks was attacked in her Detroit home by Joseph Skipper, who is also African American. The incident created outrage throughout America. Skipper was arrested and charged with various breaking and entering offenses against Parks and other neighborhood victims. He confessed to the crime and when recounting the sequence of events said he didn't know he was in Parks’s home but recognized her after entering. Skipper asked, "Hey, aren't you Rosa Parks?" and she replied "yes." She handed him $3 when he demanded money and an additional $50 when he demanded more. Before fleeing, Skipper struck Parks in the face.^[3] Skipper admitted guilt and on August 8, 1995 was sentenced to eight to fifteen years in prison.^[4] Parks notably forgave her assailant and expressed a wish that he could receive rehabilitation instead of imprisonment.

Lawsuit against OutKast

In 1999 a lawsuit was filed on her behalf against the popular American hip hop duo OutKast and LaFace Records, claiming that the group had illegally used her name without her permission for their song "Rosa Parks", the most successful radio single of their 1998 album Aquemini.

In 2004, the judge in the case appointed an impartial representative for Parks after her family expressed concerns that her caretakers and her lawyers were pursuing the case based on their own financial interest. "My auntie would never, ever go to this length to hurt some young artists trying to make it in the world," Parks’s niece, Rhea McCauley, said in an Associated Press interview. "As a family, our fear is that during her last days Auntie Rosa will be surrounded by strangers trying to make money off of her name."

OutKast was dismissed from the suit in August 2004. Parks’ attorneys and caretaker refiled and named BMG, Arista Records and LaFace Records as the defendants, asking for $5 billion in damages. The lawsuit was settled on April 15, 2005. In the settlement agreement, OutKast and their producers and record labels agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in creating educational programs on the life of Rosa Parks. The record labels and OutKast were not made to admit any wrongdoing.

Death and funeral

Rosa Parks died at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005 at approximately 1900 hours EDT at her apartment in Detroit, Michigan. She suffered from dementia. No funeral plans have been announced to the public yet.

Notes

^ "Assailant Recognized Rosa Parks", Detroit Free Press, September 3, 1994
^ "Man Gets Prison Term For Attack on Rosa Parks", San Francisco Chronicle, August 8, 1995

References

Editorial. 1974. "Two decades later." New York Times (May 17): 38. ("Within a year of Brown, Rosa Parks, a tired seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, was, like Homer Plessy sixty years earlier, arrested for her refusal to move to the back of the bus.")

External links

Multimedia and interviews

Official

Other