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October 26, 2005
Rosa Parks 'Mother of the Civil rights Movement' 1913-2005
For those who lived through the unsettling 1950s and 1960s and joined the civil rights struggle, the soft-spoken Rosa Parks was more, much more than the woman who refused to give up her bus seat to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama. [Hers] was an act that forever changed White America's view of Black people, and forever changed America itself. Richette L. Haywood
Rosa Parks defiant act and consequent arrest on December 1, 1955, set about an almost universal black boycott of the Montgomery's city buses which started on December 5th and lasted 381 days. This wrecked financial havoc for the bus companies and eventually lead to integration on busses on December 21 1956.
Her involvement did not end there. After receiving threats to her family she moved to Detroit where she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which offers career training and motivation to 12 to 18 year olds. She was concerned that elder African-Americans had shielded the younger generation from their suffering and so they had become complacent and were taking their rights for granted. She said;
We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today.
The list of awards received by Rosa Parks would take all day to read. Her credits have included Martin Luther King Jr Nonviolent Peace Prize, 1980; The Eleanor Roosevelt Women of Courage Award, Wonder Women Foundation, 1984; and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, 1999.
In 1993 she published a children’s book entitled Rosa Parks: My Story which was then revived for an even younger audience, now called I Am Rosa Parks. It contains age appropriate definitions of concepts such as racism and segregation, so that even children as young as four can begin to grasp the struggle for Civil Rights.
Much is being said, particularly this morning, that she did not set out to change history on that fateful day 50 years ago that she simply remained seated because she was tired after a long day at work as a seamstress. In Rosa Parks; My Story she puts us right;
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired but that wasn't true I was not tired physically I was not old. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Some Links
Obituary by Sheila Rowbotham in The Guardian.
BBC Obituary
Gale Group Profile.
GreatWomen.org
Africa Within
Wikipedia
Posted by purple elephant at October 26, 2005 10:19 AM