The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

272 Pages·2013·2.01 MB·English

by  Jeanne Theoharis

THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS
merstein
So
Stephen
Rosa Parks speaking at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, 1965.
Ralph Abernathy is on the left.
REBELLIOUS LIFE
the of
MRS. ROSA PARKS
Jeanne Theoharis
BEACON PRESS ■ BOSTON
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2013 by Jeanne Theoharis
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper
ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Excerpts from the poems “Harvest” and “Nikki Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni and from the
Claude McKays poem “If We Must Die” are reprinted here with permission.
Text design and composition by Kim Arney
Earlier versions of portions of some chapters were previously published: ‘“A Life History
of Being Rebellious’: The Radicalism of Rosa Parks,” in Want to Start a Revolution?
Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, Dayo Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi
Woodard, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2009); “Accidental Matriarchs and
Beautiful Helpmates: Gender and the Memorialization of the Civil Rights Movement,”
in Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Studies, a National Movement, Emilye
Crosby, ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011); ‘The Northern Promised Land
That Wasn’t’: Rosa Parks and the Black Freedom Struggle in Detroit,” OAH Magazine of
History 26, no. 1 (January 2012).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Theoharis, Jeanne.
The rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks / Jeanne Theoharis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8070-5047-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8070-5048-4 (electronic)
1. Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005. 2. African American women civil rights workers—Alabama—
Montgomery—Biography. 3. Civil rights workers—Alabama—Montgomery—Biography.
4. African Americans—Civil rights—Alabama—Montgomery—History—20th century.
5. Segregation in transportation—Alabama—Montgomery—History—20th century.
6. Montgomery (Ala.)—Race relations. 7. Montgomery (Ala.)—Biography. I. Title.
F334.M753P3883 ooia.
323.092—dc23
[B]
2012031992
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION National Honor/Public Mythology:
The Passing of Rosa Parks vii
CHAPTER ONE “A Life History of Being Rebellious”:
The Early Years of Rosa McCauley Parks 1
CHAPTER TWO “It Was Very Difficult to Keep Going
When All Our Work Seemed to Be in Vain”:
The Civil Rights Movement before the
Bus Boycott 17
CHAPTER THREE “I Had Been Pushed As Far As I Could Stand
to Be Pushed”: Rosa Parks’s Bus Stand 46
CHAPTER FOUR “There Lived a Great People”:
The Montgomery Bus Boycott 72
CHAPTER FIVE “It Is Fine to Be a Heroine but the Price
Is High”: The Suffering of Rosa Parks 116
CHAPTER SIX “The Northern Promised Land That Wasn’t”:
Rosa Parks and the Black Freedom
Struggle in Detroit 165
CHAPTER SEVEN “Any Move to Show We Are Dissatisfied”:
Mrs. Parks in the Black Power Era 201
CONCLUSION “Racism Is Still Alive”: Negotiating the
Politics of Being a Symbol 233
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2 45
NOTES 248
INDEX 296
INTRODUCTION
National Honor/Public
Mythology
The Passing of Rosa Parks
ON OCTOBER 14, 2005, after nearly seventy years of activism, Rosa Parks
died in her home in Detroit at the age of ninety-two. Within days of her death,
Representative John Conyers Jr., who had employed Parks for twenty years
in his Detroit office, introduced a resolution to have her body lie in honor
in the Capitol rotunda. Less than two months after Hurricane Katrina and
after years of partisan rancor over the social justice issues most pressing to
civil rights activists like Parks, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle
rushed to pay tribute to the “mother of the civil rights movement.” Parks
would become the first woman and second African American to be granted
this honor. “Awesome” was how Willis Edwards, a longtime associate who
helped organize the three-state tribute, described the numbers of the people
who pulled it together.1
Parks’s body was first flown to Montgomery for a public viewing and ser­
vice attended by various dignitaries, including Condoleezza Rice, who af­
firmed that “without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today
as Secretary of State.” Then her body was flown to Washington, D.C., on a
plane commanded by Lou Freeman, one of the first African American chief
pilots for a commercial airline. The plane circled Montgomery twice in honor
of Parks, with Freeman singing “We Shall Overcome” over the loudspeaker.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the plane,” recalled Parks’s longtime friend, federal
Sixth Circuit judge Damon Keith.2 Her coffin was met in Washington by the
National Guard and accompanied to its place of honor in the Capitol rotunda.
Forty thousand Americans came to the Capitol to bear witness to her
passing. President and Mrs. Bush laid a wreath on her unadorned cherry-
wood coffin. “The Capitol Rotunda is one of America’s most powerful illus­
trations of the values of freedom and equality upon which our republic was
founded,” Senate majority leader Bill Frist, resolution cosponsor, explained to
reporters, “and allowing Mrs. Parks to lie in honor here is a testament to the
impact of her life on both our nation’s history and future.” Yet, Frist claimed
vii
Viii INTRODUCTION
Parks’s stand was “not an intentional attempt to change a nation, but a singu­
lar act aimed at restoring the dignity of the individual.”3
Her body was taken from the Capitol to the Metropolitan African Meth­
odist Episcopal Church for a public memorial before an overflowing crowd.
Then her casket was returned to Detroit for another public viewing at the
Museum of African American History. Thousands waited in the rain to pay
their respects to one of Detroit’s finest. The seven-hour funeral celebration
held at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple on November 2 attracted four thou­
sand mourners and a parade of speakers and singers from Bill Clinton to
Aretha Franklin. In their tributes, Democratic presidential hopefuls focused
on Parks’s quietness: Senator Barack Obama praised Parks as a “small, quiet
woman whose name will be remembered,” while Senator Hillary Clinton
spoke of the importance of “quiet Rosa Parks moments.” As thousands more
waited outside to see the dramatic spectacle, a horse-drawn carriage carried
Mrs. Parks’s coffin to Woodlawn Cemetery, where she was buried next to her
husband and mother.4 Six weeks later, President Bush signed a bill ordering a
permanent statue of Parks placed in the U.S. Capitol, the first ever of an Afri­
can American, explaining, “By refusing to give in, Rosa Parks showed that one
candle can light the darkness. . . . Like so many institutionalized evils, once
the ugliness of these laws was held up to the light, they could not stand . ..
and as a result, the cruelty and humiliation of the Jim Crow laws are now a
thing of the past.”5
Parks’s passing presented an opportunity to honor a civil rights legend
and to foreground the pivotal but not fully recognized work of movement
women. Many sought to commemorate her commitment to racial justice and
pay tribute to her courage and public service. Tens of thousands of Americans
took off work and journeyed long distances to Montgomery, D.C., and Detroit
to bear witness to her life and pay their respects. Across the nation, people
erected alternate memorials to Mrs. Parks in homes, churches, auditoriums,
and public spaces of their communities. The streets of Detroit were packed
with people who, denied a place in the church, still wanted to honor her leg­
acy.6 Awed by the numbers of people touched by Parks’s passing, friends and
colleagues saw this national honor as a way to lift up the legacy of this great
race woman.
Despite those powerful visions and labors, the woman who emerged in
the public tribute bore only a fuzzy resemblance to Rosa Louise Parks. De­
scribed by the New York Times as the “accidental matriarch of the civil rights
movement,” the Rosa Parks who surfaced in the deluge of public commentary
was, in nearly every account, characterized as “quiet.” “Humble,” “dignified,”
INTRODUCTION IX
and “soft-spoken,” she was “not angry” and “never raised her voice.” Her pub­
lic contribution as the “mother of the movement” was repeatedly defined by
one solitary act on the bus on a long-ago December day and linked to her
quietness. Held up as a national heroine but stripped of her lifelong history of
activism and anger at American injustice, the Parks who emerged was a self-
sacrificing mother figure for a nation who would use her death for a ritual of
national redemption. In this story, the civil rights movement demonstrated
the power and resilience of American democracy. Birthed from the act of a
simple Montgomery seamstress, a nonviolent struggle built by ordinary peo­
ple had corrected the aberration of Southern racism without overthrowing
the government or engaging in a bloody revolution.7
This narrative of national redemption entailed rewriting the history of the
black freedom struggle along with Parkss own rich political history —disre­
garding her and others’ work in Montgomery that had tilled the ground for
decades for a mass movement to flower following her 1955 bus stand. It ig­
nored her forty years of political work in Detroit after the boycott, as well as
the substance of her political philosophy, a philosophy that had commonalties
with Malcolm X, Queen Mother Moore, and Ella Baker, as well as Martin Lu­
ther King Jr. The 2005 memorial celebrated Parks the individual rather than
a community coming together in struggle. Reduced to one act of conscience
made obvious, the long history of activism that laid the groundwork for her
decision, the immense risk of her bus stand, and her labors over the 382-day
boycott went largely unheralded, the happy ending replayed over and over.
Her sacrifice and lifetime of political service were largely backgrounded.
Buses were crucial to the pageantry of the event and trailed her coffin
around the country.8 Sixty Parks family members and dignitaries traveled
from Montgomery to D.C. aboard three Metro buses draped in black bun­
ting. In D.C., a vintage bus also dressed in black, along with other city buses,
followed the hearse to the public memorial at the Metropolitan African Meth­
odist Episcopal Church. The procession to and from the Capitol rotunda in­
cluded an empty vintage 1957 bus. The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn,
Michigan, offered free admission the day of her funeral so visitors could see
the actual bus “where it all began.”
Parkss body also served an important function, brought from Detroit to
Montgomery to Washington, D.C., and then back to Detroit for everyone
to witness. Her body became necessary for these public rites, a sort of pub­
lic communion where Americans would visit her coffin and be sanctified.
This personal moment with Parkss body became not simply a private mo­
ment of grief and honor but also a public act of celebrating a nation that
X INTRODUCTION
would celebrate her. Having her casket on view in the Capitol honored Parks
as a national dignitary while reminding mourners that their experience was
sponsored by the federal government. Look how far the nation has come, the
events tacitly announced, look at what a great nation we are. A woman who
had been denied a seat on the bus fifty years earlier was now lying in the Capi­
tol. Instead of using the opportunity to illuminate and address current social
inequity, the public spectacle provided an opportunity for the nation to lay to
rest a national heroine and its own history of racism.
This national honor for Rosa Parks served to obscure the present in­
justices facing the nation. Less than two months after the shame of the fed­
eral governments inaction during Hurricane Katrina, the public memorial
for Parks provided a way to paper over those devastating images from New
Orleans. Burying the history of American racism was politically useful and
increasingly urgent. Parkss body brought national absolution at a moment
when government negligence and the economic and racial inequities laid bare
during Katrina threatened to disrupt the idea of a color-blind America. Ad­
ditionally, in the midst of a years-long war where the Pentagon had forbidden
the photographing of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Parkss
coffin was to be the one that would be seen and honored.
Friends and colleagues noted the irony of such a misappropriation. Many
bemoaned the fact that some of the speakers at the memorials didn’t really
know Mrs. Parks, while many friends and longtime political associates weren’t
invited to participate. Some refused to go or even to watch, seeing this as an
affront to the woman they had admired, while others felt troubled but at­
tended nevertheless. Still others used the events to pay tribute to the greatness
of the woman they had known. Regardless, they saw the nation squandering
the opportunity to recommit itself to the task of social justice to which Parks
had dedicated her life.
The public memorial promoted an inspirational fable: a long-suffering,
gentle heroine challenged backward Southern villainy with the help of a
faceless chorus of black boycotters and catapulted a courageous new leader,
Martin Luther King Jr. into national leadership. Mrs. Parks was honored as
midwife—not a leader or thinker or long-time activist—of a struggle that
had long run its course. This fable is a romantic one, promoting the idea that
without any preparation (political or psychic) or subsequent work a person
can make great change with a single act, suffer no lasting consequences, and
one day be heralded as a hero. It is also gendered, holding up a caricature of a
quiet seamstress who demurely kept her seat and implicitly castigating other
women, other black women, for being poor or loud or angry and therefore
INTRODUCTION X!
not appropriate for national recognition. Parks’s memorialization promoted
an improbable childrens story of social change—one not-angry woman sat
down and the country was galvanized—that erased the long history of collec­
tive action against racial injustice and the widespread opposition to the black
freedom movement, which for decades treated Parks’s extensive political ac­
tivities as “un-American.”
This fable—of an accidental midwife without a larger politics—has made
Parks a household name but trapped her in the elementary school curricu­
lum, rendering her uninteresting to many young people. The variety of strug­
gles that Parks took part in, the ongoing nature of the campaign against racial
injustice, the connections between Northern and Southern racism that she
recognized, and the variety of Northern and Southern movements in which
she engaged have been given short shrift in her iconization. Parks’s act was
separated from a community of people who prepared the way for her action,
expanded her stand into a movement, and continued with her in the struggle
for justice in the decades that followed.9
This limited view of Parks has extended to the historical scholarship as
well. Despite the wealth of children’s books on Parks, Douglas Brinkley’s
pocket-sized, un-footnoted biography Rosa Parks: A Life and Parks’s own
young-adult-focused autobiography with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story,
are the only more detailed treatments of her life and politics.10 With biogra­
phies of Abraham Lincoln numbering over a hundred and of Martin Luther
King in the dozens, the lack of a scholarly monograph on Parks is notable. The
trend among scholars in recent years has been to de-center Parks in the story
of the early civil rights movement, focusing on the role of other activists in
Montgomery; on other people, like Claudette Colvin, who had also refused
to give up their seats; and on other places than Montgomery that helped give
rise to a mass movement. While this has provided a much more substantive
account of the boycott and the roots of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks
continues to be hidden in plain sight, celebrated and paradoxically relegated
to be a hero for children.
When I began this project, people often stared at me blankly—another
book on Rosa Parks? Surely there was already a substantive biography. Oth­
ers assumed that the mythology of the simple, tired seamstress had long
since been revealed and repudiated. Many felt confident we already knew her
story—she was the NAACP secretary who’d attended Highlander Folk School
and hadn’t even been the first arrested for refusing to move, they quickly recited.
Some even claimed that if Rosa Parks had supported other movements, “don’t
you think we would know that already.”