dec 1, 1955-- a woman refuses to give up her seat on a bus--the world changed.

[niyad]

ONE mention on this board that I could find about this anniversary (thank you, omaha steve)


Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress later called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".<1>

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955,<2> had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system. In New York City, in 1854, Lizzie Jennings engaged in similar activity, leading to the desegregation of the horsecars and horse-drawn omnibuses of that city.<3> But unlike these previous individual actions of civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia and became embroiled in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast.

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Her death in 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

. . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks




Rosa Parks
(Kristin Lems)
words and music by Dee Werner c 2007

Oh how we sang this on the road for equality! And what an honor it was to be told Rosa herself was given my album and loved the song. Dee Werner, who wrote the song, lives in St. Louis, and her song has become a legend in its own right. Rosa lives!! (This was recorded live in 1978 - if recorded today, I would repolace the "n" word regardless of its political power at describing racism)

In Montgomery Alabama not a long time ago
A colored lady sat down on the bus
She was tired, she did day work
She scrubbed floors, her feet hurt
And since that day, she changed the world for us

Because she said, “No sir, I won’t get up.
I’m tired and I want to sit down and I won’t get up.”
You can talk about Martin Luther King,
Have demonstrations, anything
Just remember who began it – Rosa Parks!

Well in this wide and wicked world, tell me
What kind of man
Would say to a nice old lady, “Nxxx, get up!”
Well she was just like me and you
And she did what she must do
And she said, “No sir, I won’t get up.”

And she said, “No sir, I won’t get up.
I’m tired and I want to sit down and I won’t get up.”
You can talk about Martin Luther King,
Have demonstrations, anything
Just remember who began it – Rosa Parks!

Well one day the South will rise
And the North will realize
Who our heroes really truly are
And then we’ll tear down those statues
Of Robert E. Lee
And put one up for good ole Rosie Parks!

Because she said, “No sir, I won’t get up.
I’m tired and I want to sit down and I won’t get up.”
You can talk about Martin Luther King,
Have demonstrations, anything
Just remember who began it – Rosa Parks!

http://www.kristinlems.com/

[EmilyKent]

1. Well, the US changed.

[niyad]

2. and look where we are now.

[hayu_lol]

3. Rosa Parks had...

Hope and achieved Change. We seem to be regressing today from the gains that Rosa's actions help to make.

I was surprised that there hasn't been much reaction to her mention on the boards.

[niyad]

6. that surprised me as well. kept looking for other mentions and only found one.

and amy goodman was the only person I heard mention it, although I may have missed the others.

[hfojvt]

4. I wonder if Montgomery still has a bus system

Okay, it is a much bigger city than I thought, with 200,983 people according to my old road atlas.

One way the US has changed since then is that we have much less mass transit than we once did.

[niyad]

5. this burg (700,000 + in metro area) has one of THE worst transit systems I have ever seen.

I think Ms. Parks would have been horrified. the mayor, for example, has referred, in public, to the riders of public transit as "lowlifes and bums". he probably would have tried to jail her.

[hfojvt]

8. is it the transit system that is bad, or the riders?

I remember once in about 1981 that I was riding a bus at night in the Twin Cities. This unshaven drunk old white guy staggers onto the bus and plops down right next to this attractive young black woman. I thought that I, or somebody was gonna have to confront him and perhaps cause a scene, but I was with three or four fundamentalist christians and they handled it fairly well. One moved across the aisle from the drunk and another to the seat in front and they started chatting friendly with him, distracting him from pestering the young woman. Of course, now I cannot remember who got off the bus first.

I thought it was interesting in Germany when I rode the train in the morning that it filled up with schoolchildren. It make me think that we have bus systems all over this country, but all those vehicles and drivers are only used to take children to and from schools. If only those resources could be used to support mass transit for adults.

[niyad]

9. it's the transit system, not the riders. the PTB in this town hate transit, have been trying to get

rid of it for years, and would, except that the federal money they take for it won't allow that. so, they do their best to make it as difficult and inconvenient as possible. the last transit director, for example, had absolutely no experience and no education in transit, hated the population she served, wouldn't even talk to the drivers. none of the people in charge ever even gets on a bus, they don't want to associate with the (in their view) lowlifes. they also have absolutely no concern for environmental issues, even when it is pointed out that, unlike here, other metro areas, in this country and around the world, are looking to transit to ease some of the environmental burden.

yes, there are some less than sterling characters who use transit here, but that is a very small percentage.

[niyad]

7. . . .

[AnArmyVeteran]

10. I was fortunate to meet & talk with Rosa Parks in 1984

Rosa was a guest speaker and I was struck by how such a small woman could create such a huge change. She was a very quiet and unassuming person but I saw so much strength in her. Rosa Parks did what Bobby Kennedy later wrote about, she changed the world...


"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation...It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." - Bobby Kennedy's Day of Affirmation Address, University of Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966

[niyad]

12. that is so wonderful. what was the occasion? we would all love to hear more.

[AnArmyVeteran]

13. I worked for a NASA contractor at the Johnson Space Center where she appeared.

Rosa Parks visited a few places around NASA and I met her in a small lunchroom rearranged to accommodate a lecturn and a meet and greet area. She spoke briefly after several others praisingly talked about what she did. When you meet someone who is 'larger than life' you do so expecting to see an imposing person, but Rosa was a small, very distinguished lady who spoke softly and unassumingly. She was void of any pretense. I felt so fortunate to have been able to shake her small hand and say a few things to her.

I wish we had digital cameras then to record the moment with pictures and videos. But I have that special moment stored in my memory and I'll always cherish the time I got to meet her.

Because I worked at NASA in Houston for several years I got to meet a lot of famous people, like John Denver, June Lockhart and many other celebrities. I also got to see Reagan after the Challenger crash in 1986. It was chilling and emotional to watch the missing man formation fly over while Reagan stood before the lost astronauts' grieving family members. I later worked with Ellison Onizuka's daughter on space station projects. At that time I created mission video programs, so experiments she worked on were part of the program I produced.

I also saw China's leader Deng Xiaoping at the Johnson Space Center. He could barely see out of the window of the limo he was riding in. It seemed funny how someone so short could be the leader of a billion people. (Nothing against short people though :)

Since I worked directly with astronauts I knew most of them too. I worked with a lot of 'firsts' in space, like Sally Ride (1st female), Onizuka (1st Asian) and so on. I was a huge fan of John Denver. It was a thrill to meet him in 1994 just a year before he was killed. 'Looking For Space' was one of my favorite John Denver songs.

[Blue_Tires]

11. kick