Rosa Parks remembered

Rosa Parks

My husband, Isaac T. Moorehead, and I were employed at Alabama State College in Montgomery in 1955 when Rosa Parks made her historic, courageous stand (or should I say sit-in) on the Montgomery City Transit bus. We owned a car but with us both being Black Southerners, we still knew firsthand the humiliation and utter disrespect of racism we had to endure when traveling by bus, train or car throughout the South. It's hard to put into words the pure elation we felt when we heard that Mrs. Parks would not move back further on that bus in order to allow a white man to have her seat. We felt liberated at the time. We became involved in an organized effort to transport our people who refused to ride the segregated buses, to work and to shop during the boycott. When the boycott claimed success, at last we would be afforded our choice of seats on vehicles of mass transportation in Alabama. Thank you, Rosa Parks, for being the catalyst in launching a movement to liberate Black people in the South from legal segregation.
—Consuela Lee, jazz pianist & composer, resident of Snow Hill, Ala.

Rosa Parks was a conscious, disciplined Black woman who was chosen by civil-rights leaders in 1955 to help spark the movement against segregation in Montgomery. Fifty years later, she stayed committed to the struggle for social justice until the day she died. A lot of people even today continue to belittle the dangers that she faced when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was not just taking on individual white people infected with racism, but she was taking on the whole capitalist system, including the business sector and the police. We should elevate the lives of women like Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman and countless other Black women who took heroic actions against racism and other forms of injustice. The best way to honor the memory of Rosa Parks is to mobilize nationwide protests against racism, war and poverty on Dec. 1, the 50th anniversary of the day that she said "no racist segregation."
—Brenda Stokely, trade union & anti-war leader, New York City

Rosa Parks is great not because of the powerful movement that sprung from her single act of courage. She is great because she was an ordinary woman who'd had enough. She was not a career activist. She was not an ambitious politician. She was just a Black woman who decided that she answered to a power higher than white law and contempt, and that she had freedoms that were not dependent upon white permission and disposition. She signifies a powerful truth: It is the everyday person that will make change. It is the individual among the masses that will galvanize us to work toward freedom. It is the right action of one person that will inspire us for centuries to come. Rosa Parks is my inspiration.
—Nana Soul, Black Waxx recording artist & community activist

These tributes from three respected Black women to Rosa Parks, who passed away Oct. 24 in Detroit at the age of 92, reflect the deep gratitude that millions of people had for this former Black seamstress who created the spark of hope amongst the African American masses in the South on Dec. 1, 1955. On that day, Rosa Parks said "enough is enough" when she refused to go to the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.

This act was not just a whim on Parks' part. It reflected a conscious decision by the NAACP, of which Parks was a member, to challenge the entire system of racist laws in the city and state.

After Parks' arrest, the historic Montgomery bus boycott that began on Dec. 5 propelled 40,000 Black people, most of them poor and bus riders, into a powerful movement for social change. Dr. Martin Luther King, then a young pastor in Montgomery, rose to prominence as the main spokesperson during the boycott, and eventually the leader of the civil rights movement.

No amount of racist repression or intimidation could defeat the organized Black masses in this effort.

Parks' action, along with the defeat of bus segregation in Montgomery, created the momentum needed to challenge legal segregation in the Deep South, which had kept Black people in semi-slavery conditions in the aftermath of the Civil War. For instance, on Feb. 1, 1960, just a handful of Black college students began sit-ins at segregated lunch counters at Woolworth’s department stores in Greensboro, N.C. By a few months later, thousands of Black students were organizing similar sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, which eventually defeated the racist segregation laws. These sit-ins helped to launch the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.

What is the legacy of Rosa Parks? It is a legacy of struggle. But that legacy is not just to review the past for nostalgia's sake. More important, it is to take the lessons of the past and apply them to today's struggles.

Hurricane Katrina and the criminal neglect of the government exposed the ugly truth that social conditions for Black people - especially in the Deep South - have not changed fundamentally since 1955. The struggle for the right to return to the Gulf Coast by displaced African Americans has sown the seeds of a united front of Black activists who are organizing for a caravan march of Katrina survivors from Jackson, Miss., to New Orleans on Dec. 10.

On Dec. 1—the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' blow against racist segregation—community, labor, anti-war and other social forces will be remembering this significant anniversary with a nationwide day of absence and protest against racism, war and poverty. In New York on Oct. 27, City Councilperson Charles Barron will host a news conference to announce that he will introduce a resolution declaring Dec. 1 "Rosa Parks Day" in New York.

The resolution will call for employers to allow workers to leave work and for students to leave classes on Dec. 1 to participate in a march and rally on Wall Street in protest of the war makers. Student organizers will be organizing walk-outs from their schools in honor of the struggle-oriented legacy of Rosa Parks.