Murphy
Browne © February 4-2020
ROSA
PARKS FEBRUARY 4-1913
One
hundred and seven years ago on February 4, 1913 Rosa Louise McCauley was born
in Tuskegee, Alabama. After her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated
when Rosa was two, Rosa’s mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to
live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards who had been enslaved
Africans before emancipation in 1865. During a time when it was extremely
dangerous to do so Rose and Sylvester Edwards were strong advocates for racial
equality. Rose and Sylvester Edwards unlike many African Americans were not
tenant farmers (sharecroppers) they owned their farm, where Rosa spent her
youth. Her family was always prepared for confrontation with white supremacist
threats especially from the Ku Klux Klan. Her grandfather would often sit
beside the front door at night with a shot gun in his lap, prepared to protect
his family. Many African Americans accepted the abuse as a fact of life while
others resisted. Rosa's family was one that did not tolerate the injustice, so
she grew up never accepting white abuse quietly. In one experience, Rosa's
grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan
members marched down the street. Not surprisingly Rose and Sylvester Edwards
were Garveyites, supporters of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his
Pan-African movement.
With
her upbringing it is not surprising that Rosa Parks became an active member of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) She and
her husband Raymond Parks were actively involved in seeking justice in the case
of the "Scottsboro Boys" who were nine African American teenagers,
ages 13 to 19, falsely accused in Alabama of raping two White women on a train
in 1931. In 1944 Rosa Parks was the NAACP activist and lead investigator after
24-year-old African American mother and wife Recy Taylor was kidnapped as she
was leaving church and brutally raped by seven white men. In 1931 Rosa Parks
was an 18-year-old domestic servant working with a white family when she barely
escaped being raped by a white man she describes as "Mr. Charley" in
an essay she wrote about the horrific and traumatic event http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/rosa-parks-essay-reveals-rape-attempt-1.997925
On
December 1, 1955 when she was arrested Rosa Parks was a veteran Civil Rights
activist. Although Rosa Parks was not the first African American passenger on a
Montgomery, Alabama bus to refuse to give up her seat in 1955 she seemed to be
the most "qualified" in the eyes of the community leaders. Two
others, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin (March 1955) and 18 year-old-Mary Louise
Smith (October 1955) had been arrested in 1955, but the case of Rosa Parks
became the one the legal challenge was based on. The case against the City of
Montgomery that ended the segregated bus system named four other plaintiffs,
including Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.
On
the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson began making
plans for a boycott. She would become one of the most prominent leaders of the
boycott. In her 1987 book "The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who
Started It" she writes about the daily humiliations African Americans
encountered as they travelled on the buses.
African
Americans accounted for 75 percent to 80 percent of the passengers on the
buses. There were many incidents when African American passengers were arrested
for "disorderly conduct" when white bus drivers said they had
"talked back" or "didn't have the correct change." 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 African American 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.
On
December 1, 1955 as the bus Rosa Parks was riding made its way along its route,
it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the
driver noticed that a white passenger was standing in the aisle. The driver
stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row,
demanding that the four African American passengers give up their seats. The
Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving the sign back that
separated African American and white passengers and demanding that African
American passengers give up their seats to white passengers. If any African
American passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse
service and could call the police to have them removed. Three of the other
African American passengers in the row of seats vacated their seats but Rosa
Parks refused and remained seated. The driver called the police and had her
arrested. Later, Rosa recalled that her refusal was not because she was
physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in. The police arrested Rosa
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.
African
Americans were arrested, harassed--and even shot dead--for refusing to give up
their seats on the bus to white passengers. There were other cases when African
American women were beaten and even dragged from the doors by racist bus
drivers. Beginning on December 1, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested there were
plans to boycott the Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers,
and handbills were printed and distributed in African American neighbourhoods.
Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on
Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Rosa Parks' trial—in protest of her arrest.
African Americans 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
on December 5, 1955 organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.
The boycott was successful even though it lasted more than a year. Rosa Parks
became known as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement because of her
prominent role in the Montgomery bus boycott.
Rosa
Parks transitioned to the ancestral realm on October 24, 2005.
Murphy
Browne © February 4-2020
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