| Mrs. Rosa Parks Remembered
By Daniel Domaguin
Activist, fighter, role model, civil rights leader Mrs. Rosa Parks passed
away in Detroit of natural causes on October 24. Pam Brooks, Assistant
Professor of African American Studies, says Mrs. Parks was “soft-spoken,
diminutive in size, unassuming, but a fighter of fierce courage and
determination.” She was laid to rest at a Detroit mausoleum on
November 2 after a seven-hour long service, at which political and religious
leaders spoke to Mrs. Parks’ resiliency, passion, and commitment
for peace. Prior to the service, Mrs. Parks’ body traveled to
Montgomery, Alabama, and laid in honor under the Capitol dome in Washington,
DC, as the second African American and first woman to ever do so.
Mrs. Rosa Parkswas born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in
Tuskegee, Alabama. She moved to her grandparents’ farm in Pine
Level, Alabama at the age of two, and grew up there under the unequal
conditions of the American South. Her grandparents, who were former
slaves, talked to her about what they underwent during slavery. She
was aware of the injustices committed against Black people, and as a
young girl, heard the Klan pass her family’s door as they rode
through the night in Pine Level. At eleven, she was enrolled in the
Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school with a progressive
outlook, and an opportunity for her and other Black girls where few
others existed. As her grandparents grew old and her mother worked far
away from home, Mrs. Rosa Parks assumed a great deal of responsibility
for her and her family.
In December of 1932, she married Raymond Parks a barber from Montgomery.
In the early 1930s, Mr. and Mrs. Parks became involved with the defense
of nine young Black men, falsely accused or rape in the Scottsboro case.
Her activity surrounding the case politicized her, and in the early
1940s became a member of the NAACP. She traveled to the Highlander Folk
School, a “Movement halfway house” that essentially trained
organizers in bringing social change to their communities. When she
returned to Montgomery, she was dedicated to the growing Black Freedom
Movement.
It was soon after her return, on December 1, 1955, that Mrs. Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat to a white man. Her act of civil disobedience
is the moment that many historians cite as the beginning of the modern
Civil Rights movement. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed
as the central planning organization for the eventual 382-day bus boycott
in Montgomery, through which Mrs. Rosa Parks continued organizing alongside
other civil rights leaders, including a young Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mrs. and Mr. Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, where Mrs. served on the
staff of Representative John Coyers. She also established an organization
assisting young Black people called the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute
for Self-Development after her husband died in 1977. Mrs. Rosa Parks
persisted in her activist work throughout her life, and was officially
recognized for her leadership multiple times by the government, among
the awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 from President
Bill Clinton, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. In her age,
she lived quietly in Detroit, where she died at the age of 92 last week.
Courtney Patterson, Africana Community Coordinator in the Multicultural
Resource Center, said she appreciates the work of Mrs. Rosa Parks, “especially
the efforts she contributed, not just as a force in the civil rights
movement, but also for her entire life. The planned decision she made
to not give up her seat was a pivotal moment in time because it was
a build of sorts. People had been protesting segregation for a long
time, but she helped to spark the unity amongst folks to get involved/down
to business. I've always held her protest as strength for me because
it was calculated, current, and critical to her existence as a human
being. She knew the consequences, went to jail, and changed history
because of it.”
Professor Pam Brooks expressed similar sentiments for Mrs. Parks’
actions on December 1, 1955, saying, “once she refused to leave
her seat, was committed all the way -- she did not hesitate to allow
her case to be used as the one around which a whole movement would be
centered.” Professor Brooks, who teaches a class on the Black
Freedom Movement, added, “Without Mrs. Parks, our history of struggle
would be the poorer -- she provided such dignity and resolve in her
person, and linked the "modern" struggle to our own history
of resistance. That she was a woman, respectable and rebellious in her
comportment, primarily working-class, and prepared to go the entire
distance for Black liberation underscores the significance of Black
women's political work that seems always to be about the well-being
of the entire Black community. I am so glad she lived and that she dedicated
her life to Black people and social justice. And I say, ‘Thank
you, Mrs. Rosa Parks!’”
A special thanks to Professor Pam Brooks and Courtney Patterson
for the information and thoughts they provided for this article.
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