Rosa Parks died yesterday. She was 92.
Known as the "mother of the American Civil Rights Movement," her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus, now almost fifty years ago on December 1, 1955, sparked the uprising that changed the social, moral and economic landscape of the nation.
Public transit, accommodations and restaurants were thoroughly segregated across the South, as well as in other parts of the nation, when Parks defied custom and Jim Crow law by simply not giving up her seat on the bus. [It might be good for us to remember this terrible reality the next time someone begins to call us back to "the good old days" of the 1950s!]
Misquoted on a number of occasions, Parks had reportedly said at one time that she was "too tired" after a long day at work to relinquish the seat, but she was quick to correct this misinformation by saying, "I wasn't tired, I was just tired of giving in."
She simply acted on what thousands of African Americans believed: citizens deserve better treatment and more respect as human beings no matter what the law might dictate.
Her act of defiance led to her arrest and conviction for violating segregation laws. She was fined $10.
Parks had long resented and resisted the racism of the Montgomery statute. Ironically, James Blake, the same bus driver behind the wheel on the day she refused to give up her seat, had put her off his bus years ealier in 1943 for refusing to give up her seat.
In response to this legal action, the African American citizens of Montgomery organized a 13-month bus boycott. During the boycott, 40,000 black citizens walked, car pooled or took black-owned taxi cabs wherever they traveled.
During the boycott, they successfully challenged Alabama law before the U. S. Supreme Court.
Parks provided the challenge that her young, new pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. (age 26) needed. From the pulpit and the pews of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King served as the spokesperson for the moral and spiritual crusade that changed the nation. His leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association demonstrated the power people of faith can exert in the face of oppression and injustice.
Parks' courageous act of civil disobedience signaled the beginning of the end of legal segregation, though the struggle she set off continued for more than a decade. Thanks to her courage, and to the courage of thousands of her friends and neighbors, the ugly reality of racism was displayed for the entire nation to see and to face.
During the boycott, many were harassed and arrested on trumped up charges. Homes, including Dr. King's, and churches were bombed. Following the ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court that outlawed segregation on the city's buses, the violence escalated. Snipers fired at buses and at King's home. Black residents were beaten and the church bombings continued.
The daughter of Tuskegee, Alabama farmers--her father also a carpenter and her mother a teacher--Parks remained uncomfortable with all the attention her action created.
This morning's Dallas Morning News quotes a woman who visited with Parks during a 1988 voter registration rally in Brooklyn, "When you sat down, our people stood up" (page 2A, Tuesday, October 25, 2005).
Rosa Parks lived and died as a person of deep, active, relevant faith.
Thank God she did.
Announcement from Duke Memorial UMC
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