John Whitehead's Commentary
Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
On December 1, 2000, the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy State University in Alabama was dedicated. "In 1955, when I was arrested," Mrs. Parks said at the dedication ceremony, "I had no way of knowing what the future held. I certainly never thought I would be remembered in such a grand manner."
This is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Rosa Parks. Her willingness to stand against injustice helped ignite the civil rights movement and, in the process, change the face of American culture.
Although the United States Supreme Court in its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, ruled that separate "educational facilities are inherently inequal," public services of every kind were still segregated in the South. In fact, in Montgomery, Alabama, buses were scenes of continual public humiliation for African-Americans. But one person, a little black lady known as Rosa Parks, would change all that. And it became a turning point in Ms. Parks' life and in the history of the struggle for racial equality.
Rosa Parks had not planned to be arrested when she boarded a bus on December 1, 1955 (as some opponents of the civil rights movement would later charge). She sat in a seat normally occupied by black passengers. Montgomery did not clearly separate the seats reserved for whites at the front of buses from those allotted for blacks nearer the back. Bus drivers reserved the power to force black passengers to give up their seats to whites. J. F. Blake exercised this authority in commanding Rosa Parks and three other black passengers to yield their row to a white man. Mrs. Parks, who was exhausted from her day's work as a seamstress and determined not to be treated as less than human, kept her seat. The driver demanded her arrest.
E. D. Nixon, a powerful leader in the Montgomery black community, asked Parks to take her case to court. In the meantime, he hoped to convince Montgomery blacks to boycott the bus system.
The community agreed on a one-day boycott, and black leaders gathered to discuss further measures. Some wanted to avoid associating their names with a protest, but 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. answered Nixon's challenge. He was not afraid, he said, to be named as a defender of the rights of blacks in Montgomery. His colleagues elected King president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).
King spoke that evening to a crowd overflowing into the street in front of Holt Street Baptist Church. He called for action, tempered with love and respect for one's fellow man:
Now, let us say that we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are a Christian people.
His audience arranged car pools and extended the bus boycott indefinitely. Since blacks comprised the majority of bus riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat. Montgomery city leaders tried a series of tactics to override the boycotters' demands. For example, police used obscure ordinances to detain carpool drivers such as King, who was arrested for exceeding the speed limit by five miles per hour. Less scrupulous opponents of the boycott bombed black churches and homes, including King's.
Arrests and bombings brought the national press to Montgomery, and nationwide exposure strengthened the movement. Reporters from throughout the country witnessed a grand jury indict eighty-nine leaders of the boycott in February 1956. Cheering crowds accompanied the offenders as they turned themselves in and were released on bail.
The Montgomery bus boycotters had demanded only courtesy from bus drivers and a definite line of segregation when they first stopped riding. However, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of any kind on buses was unconstitutional. King received word of the decision while he was in court fighting an injunction against the MIA carpool.
The Supreme Court's decision brought renewed violence to Montgomery's black community. Snipers fired on integrated buses, and bombs destroyed homes and churches.
However, within two years King became a national hero, and the battle for racial equality was well on its way to being won--all because Rosa Parks decided to stay seated on a bus and even risked going to jail in order to do the right thing.
This is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Rosa Parks. Her willingness to stand against injustice helped ignite the civil rights movement and, in the process, change the face of American culture.
Although the United States Supreme Court in its landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, ruled that separate "educational facilities are inherently inequal," public services of every kind were still segregated in the South. In fact, in Montgomery, Alabama, buses were scenes of continual public humiliation for African-Americans. But one person, a little black lady known as Rosa Parks, would change all that. And it became a turning point in Ms. Parks' life and in the history of the struggle for racial equality.
Rosa Parks had not planned to be arrested when she boarded a bus on December 1, 1955 (as some opponents of the civil rights movement would later charge). She sat in a seat normally occupied by black passengers. Montgomery did not clearly separate the seats reserved for whites at the front of buses from those allotted for blacks nearer the back. Bus drivers reserved the power to force black passengers to give up their seats to whites. J. F. Blake exercised this authority in commanding Rosa Parks and three other black passengers to yield their row to a white man. Mrs. Parks, who was exhausted from her day's work as a seamstress and determined not to be treated as less than human, kept her seat. The driver demanded her arrest.
E. D. Nixon, a powerful leader in the Montgomery black community, asked Parks to take her case to court. In the meantime, he hoped to convince Montgomery blacks to boycott the bus system.
The community agreed on a one-day boycott, and black leaders gathered to discuss further measures. Some wanted to avoid associating their names with a protest, but 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. answered Nixon's challenge. He was not afraid, he said, to be named as a defender of the rights of blacks in Montgomery. His colleagues elected King president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).
King spoke that evening to a crowd overflowing into the street in front of Holt Street Baptist Church. He called for action, tempered with love and respect for one's fellow man:
Now, let us say that we are not here advocating violence. We have overcome that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are a Christian people.
His audience arranged car pools and extended the bus boycott indefinitely. Since blacks comprised the majority of bus riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat. Montgomery city leaders tried a series of tactics to override the boycotters' demands. For example, police used obscure ordinances to detain carpool drivers such as King, who was arrested for exceeding the speed limit by five miles per hour. Less scrupulous opponents of the boycott bombed black churches and homes, including King's.
Arrests and bombings brought the national press to Montgomery, and nationwide exposure strengthened the movement. Reporters from throughout the country witnessed a grand jury indict eighty-nine leaders of the boycott in February 1956. Cheering crowds accompanied the offenders as they turned themselves in and were released on bail.
The Montgomery bus boycotters had demanded only courtesy from bus drivers and a definite line of segregation when they first stopped riding. However, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of any kind on buses was unconstitutional. King received word of the decision while he was in court fighting an injunction against the MIA carpool.
The Supreme Court's decision brought renewed violence to Montgomery's black community. Snipers fired on integrated buses, and bombs destroyed homes and churches.
However, within two years King became a national hero, and the battle for racial equality was well on its way to being won--all because Rosa Parks decided to stay seated on a bus and even risked going to jail in order to do the right thing.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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