4th
Our national ‘Parks’
The Columbia Chronicle - link
Originally published: October 31, 2005
Rosa Parks will forever be remembered as a historic figure in the American Civil Rights movement. Her Oct. 24 death causes us to reflect on her Dec. 1, 1955, refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
But it also makes us take a closer look at how Parks’ story has been told in the half-century since she refused to relinquish her seat to a white man. Most accounts imply that Parks was just a “tired seamstress” acting in an isolated incident. But as Martin Luther King Jr. 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.”
While Parks was not the only African-American to refuse giving up a seat to a white person—Irene Morgan’s 1944 arrest for the same action led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning segregation laws applying to travel in interstate commerce—her case is considered the landmark because it paved the way to challenge the entire system of segregationist laws.
And Parks was far from a random face in the crowd. She had been involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People since 1943 and had studied workers’ rights and racial equality at the Highlander Folk School, a civil rights training center. On the other hand, the incident in Montgomery wasn’t a planned act of protest. Rather, Parks remained seated when she was asked to give up her spot in the “colored” section of the bus.
Rosa Parks did not become an icon in the Civil Rights movement simply by coincidence; she was actively striving for equality nearly all of her life. And it’s with her passing that we both understand and appreciate the bravery she displayed. Her decision to remain seated will hopefully result in new generations that will not be afraid to stand up.
