📦 TREE 346: Unruly Figures – Rosa Parks
Every Monday in February, Valorie Clark is sharing an episode of her fascinating podcast Unruly Figures. It is Black History Month in the USA, so let’s learn some. There’s a lot about Rosa I bet you don’t know. —Jeff
Rosa Parks rose to international fame in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. It was a cold night, and she was tired after work. The segregated buses had long frustrated her, but she didn’t see an end to ‘separate but equal’ any time soon. And then she was asked to move to accommodate a white person.
It was technically illegal for the bus driver to ask her to move that night. The laws in Montgomery clearly stated that Black passengers could only be asked to move if there were open seats available further back. There were none. Rosa Parks was arrested anyway.
It sparked a new fire for the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.
Parks is often remembered as the nice lady who decided she was fed up. But she was so much more. By the time of her arrest, she had already dedicated her life to the advancement of racial equality. She was a secretary of the NAACP, and had worked tirelessly to defend Black women who were sexually assaulted by white men in Alabama. In the decades after her arrest, she could continue to fight in Montgomery, then Chicago.
She’s remembered for one night, but it was a lifetime of work. Her eternal dedication met up against the previously thought unassailable mountain of white supremacy and shifted it. Her bus ride was one moment of integrity in a lifetime of moral upstanding.
Beyoncé’s cover of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is a tribute not just to the NAACP, an organisation Rosa Parks worked for for many years, but to over a century of using music to celebrate Black pride. It’s based on a poem written by educator James Weldon Johnson in 1900, with accompanying music created by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson. The song is sometimes called the Black National Anthem.
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I actually read something recently that said that not getting up from the bus was a premeditated act by Rosa Parks, encouraged by the NAACP who she worked for. A young 15 year old had the same thing happen to her several months before, so they planned this because they thought Rosa would make a better spokesperson (the girl got pregnant and wasn't married so they didn't want to use her as "the face"). I really love that because it shows the power, organization, and grit of black people fighting for equality at that time in America. It wasn't happenstance, it was an intelligent, calculated move that paid off.
In 1966, I was 12 living in Dover, Delaware. Three of us white A students were chosen to be bussed downtown to William Henry Middle School, a black school. We were innocent to skin color and accepted the changes. However, I was treated poorly by a black biology teacher. I made A's but reportcard was a C. I was harshly punished at home not being believed. This was my first experience with prejudice reversed. Rosa Parks was brave and stuck to her beliefs. I love her courage in a crucial tme in our country's healing of slavery. I dislike that my skin color has advantages I was born into. What racial prejudices have you personally encountered?