Rosa Parks Was My Aunt. It's Time to Set the Record Straight

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/a16022001/rosa-parks-was-my-aunt/



The quiet, tired seamstress caricature isn't her real story.

By Urana McCauley As Told To Liz Dwyer
FEB 4, 2019

This is how you know her: She was the tired seamstress who refused to give up her seat, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. Maybe you remember Rosa Parks as that quiet, older woman being honored at an awards show. Or maybe you remember seeing pictures of her shaking a President’s hand. But at this year’s Golden Globes, when Oprah Winfrey talked about Recy Taylor, a woman from Alabama who was kidnapped and raped by six white men, Oprah also did some myth-busting about my aunt with these words: "Her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice."

I was excited when Oprah brought up Taylor's story because people need to know these things happened to black women. It’s our history. But it was also emotional for me to hear Oprah's words because she gave people the chance to see that Rosa Parks — my Auntie Rosa — was not just a tired old lady who sat down on a bus one day. Each Feb. 4 on my great aunt's birthday, I go to Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit to pay her my respects. But I also pay her my respects by refusing to let her legacy be turned into a caricature. I believe her story is more relevant than ever because she and people like her laid a foundation so that women today can be more vocal, can run for office, can demand equal rights and equal pay, and say we don't have to be harassed.

She was an activist her whole life.

I regularly give presentations to organizations and schools about how tirelessly my aunt worked for justice and how she’d been heavily involved in civil rights work long before she refused to give up that seat. But, real talk, I didn't realize who my aunt really was until I was 19-years-old in 1995 and she took me to a NAACP event. People were screaming at her like she was Michael Jackson. "Oh my God, you're Rosa Parks." I had never witnessed that. The whole time Auntie Rosa was sitting there, like "Oh it's not a big deal." She was very humble.

I know, it sounds crazy that that whole time I didn't understand, but, you see, she was just my aunt in my life. She would come visit, or I would go visit her, and she would ask me the same questions your aunt probably asks you: "What do you want to eat? What do you want to drink? I made some lemonade — you want some? How's school? I talked to your grandmother and she says she ain't heard from you."

</snip>

Nice article about an American Hero.

[malaise]

1. Off to the greatest page

She was an activist her whole life

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

[Caliman73]

3. Good read.

As I understand it, she was not on that bus by happenstance. Obviously she needed to ride the bus, but it wasn't like she was just tired one day and didn't get up. She knew the importance of what she was doing and she knew she was breaking the law. She was a civil rights activist knowing full well she could have been beaten and that she would be arrested and all of that.

I know that history likes a "feel good" story about ordinary people who just "have had enough" of a corrupt system, but that is Rosa Parks. She was an ordinary person who decided that the way things were in the South and for Black people everywhere, was unacceptable. So she was a seamstress and she worked, and had family, and did her everyday thing. She was also an activist and a hero for civil rights. I don't think that she wanted to be famous. She wanted to make a difference. That is what makes her ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

[McKim]

4. Kudos to Ms. McCauley

Kudos to Ms. McCauley for setting the record straight. Rosa Parks was an activist all her life and attended trainings at The Highlander Center to prepare her for her actions. The myth disempowers Black women and all activists.

[greenjar_01]

5. Yes

Rosa Parks was trained in direct action tactics at the Highlander Folk School. She was an out-and-out activist, and her attempt at getting arrested was one of multiple direct action operations being conducted against the bus companies.

[Tanuki]

14. I was just going to post about her prior activism, leadership in her local NAACP,

and the Highlander Folk School training she attended earlier in the summer of her historic bus resistance act. Some DUers may find this intetesting:

https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2019/04/rosa-parkss-transformative-two-weeks-at-the-highlander-research-and-education-center.html

[panader0]

6. When my daughter was in 6th grade she had an assignment to write

about a famous American. She chose Rosa Parks.

[lunatica]

10. My kid learned about her when he was in The first grade

I know this because once we were in a restaurant and he saw a Black family at another table which made him think about her. He just piped up and told us everything he had learned about her. He was 7 years old and he knew about her arrest and about MLK Jr. and the civil Rights movement.

We were absolutely floored!

It’s one of those memories I have of him that just swells my heart with pride and love.

[gademocrat7]

7. Incredible woman!

[Hekate]

8. I'm so glad to see this story again. It needs to be part of The Telling when her name is mentioned

I have also read that there were a myriad of other black women who worked in support of the Civil Rights movement as well, doing the skilled and necessary tasks of organizing information, providing housing, all the unseen aspects that create a movement and keep it going. So, both Black History and Women's History.

[lunatica]

9. In college, when I took Women's History I learned that Rosa Parks was

Part of the organization working to launch MLK Jr as the person he became publicly. The idea was to start the movement with him as the leader so they were completely prepared with flyers and speeches. Rosa Parks was not meant to be the public figure, but when she was arrested the MLK Jr organization was ready to launch so they used her arrest to start the movement.

So I’ve known for decades that she was an activist. It’s a testament to the organizing abilities of the movement that they were able to think fast and take her arrest as the time to launch their movement.

[mountain grammy]

11. Montgomery and Birmingham

Where history lives.

[robbob]

12. This thread prompted me to look up the story of Recy Taylor

Absolutely horrific and heartbreaking. And 1944! Hardly ancient history.

[matt819]

13. Thanks for posting

I grew up at a time when american history was not taught. As Ms McCauley observes, it was hidden, incomplete, or a caricature.

I had never heard of the Tulsa race riots until recent stories about mass burial sites and then the series Watchmen. in recent years a number of African-Americans photographers have died, and retrospectives have shown photos of African-Americans from the 1940s onward, which depict vibrant communities, now gone.

I think it was a New York Times op-doc on the creation of Central Park in New York. That resulted in the eradication of an African-American community called Seneca Village in the 1850s.

Another video I saw online recently addressed the issue of the destruction of an African-American and low income community that would eventually became trump Village in Brooklyn in the early 1960s. I lived across the street in another development and had no idea that there were other communities there previously.

Hidden histories. Or eradicated histories.

[crickets]

15. Great article.

I admit that I am one of the uninformed who thought Rosa Parks just decided not to give up her seat that day.

I always thought she was a strong woman, a wonderful role model, but I had no idea she was that involved in the Civil Rights movement beforehand and after. Good for her niece for telling more of the whole story; we are all richer for knowing. Rosa Parks deserves her due for being the amazing woman she was, for all that she did in her life - not just for refusing to move to the back of the bus one day.

Thank you for posting this, Dennis.

[Joinfortmill]

16. Lovely

[Karadeniz]

17. This is a wonderful read...thanks for sharing!❤

[UpInArms]

18. This made me cry

She wrote in one of her journals about her feelings of hurt after she got arrested. She worked in the department store where she was a seamstress for the next five weeks after that and then they let her go. During that time, her black coworkers didn't speak to her — that whole five weeks. She would say good morning and they wouldn't say anything. It was very disheartening. They looked at her like she was stirring up trouble for them. My aunt explained to me that it was because Jim Crow was telling them, "This is the best life you're going to have, and you can get killed if you resist."

[BumRushDaShow]

19. The "tired old lady" was actually 42 years old when she did that act of civil disobedience in 1955

Am trying to envision someone calling someone who is 42, "old" (except maybe some young kids).