http://www.workers.org/2005/us/rosa-parks-1103/
Rosa Parks remembered
By Monica Moorehead
Published Oct 25, 2005 10:52 PM
Rosa Parks
My husband, Isaac T. Moorehead, and I were employed at Alabama State College in
Montgomery in 1955 when Rosa Parks made her historic, courageous stand (or
should I say sit-in) on the Montgomery City Transit bus. We owned a car but
with us both being Black Southerners, we still knew firsthand the humiliation
and utter disrespect of racism we had to endure when traveling by bus, train or
car throughout the South. It's hard to put into words the pure elation we felt
when we heard that Mrs. Parks would not move back further on that bus in order
to allow a white man to have her seat. We felt liberated at the time. We became
involved in an organized effort to transport our people who refused to ride the
segregated buses, to work and to shop during the boycott. When the boycott
claimed success, at last we would be afforded our choice of seats on vehicles
of mass transportation in Alabama. Thank you, Rosa Parks, for being the
catalyst in launching a movement to liberate Black people in the South from
legal segregation.
-Consuela Lee, jazz pianist & composer, resident of Snow Hill, Ala.
Rosa Parks was a conscious, disciplined Black woman who was chosen by
civil-rights leaders in 1955 to help spark the movement against segregation in
Montgomery. Fifty years later, she stayed committed to the struggle for social
justice until the day she died. A lot of people even today continue to belittle
the dangers that she faced when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.
She was not just taking on individual white people infected with racism, but
she was taking on the whole capitalist system, including the business sector
and the police. We should elevate the lives of women like Rosa Parks, Fannie
Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman and countless other Black women who
took heroic actions against racism and other forms of injustice. The best way
to honor the memory of Rosa Parks is to mobilize nationwide protests against
racism, war and poverty on Dec. 1, the 50th anniversary of the day that she
said "no racist segregation."
-Brenda Stokely, trade union & anti-war leader, New York City
Rosa Parks is great not because of the powerful movement that sprung from her
single act of courage. She is great because she was an ordinary woman who'd had
enough. She was not a career activist. She was not an ambitious politician. She
was just a Black woman who decided that she answered to a power higher than
white law and contempt, and that she had freedoms that were not dependent upon
white permission and disposition. She signifies a powerful truth: It is the
everyday person that will make change. It is the individual among the masses
that will galvanize us to work toward freedom. It is the right action of one
person that will inspire us for centuries to come. Rosa Parks is my
inspiration.
-Nana Soul, Black Waxx recording artist & community activist
These tributes from three respected Black women to Rosa Parks, who passed away
Oct. 24 in Detroit at the age of 92, reflect the deep gratitude that millions
of people had for this former Black seamstress who created the spark of hope
amongst the African American masses in the South on Dec. 1, 1955. On that day,
Rosa Parks said "enough is enough" when she refused to go to the back of a
segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala.
This act was not just a whim on Parks' part. It reflected a conscious decision
by the NAACP, of which Parks was a member, to challenge the entire system of
racist laws in the city and state.
After Parks' arrest, the historic Montgomery bus boycott that began on Dec. 5
propelled 40,000 Black people, most of them poor and bus riders, into a
powerful movement for social change. Dr. Martin Luther King, then a young
pastor in Montgomery, rose to prominence as the main spokesperson during the
boycott, and eventually the leader of the civil rights movement.
No amount of racist repression or intimidation could defeat the organized Black
masses in this effort.
Parks' action, along with the defeat of bus segregation in Montgomery, created
the momentum needed to challenge legal segregation in the Deep South, which had
kept Black people in semi-slavery conditions in the aftermath of the Civil War.
For instance, on Feb. 1, 1960, just a handful of Black college students began
sit-ins at segregated lunch counters at Woolworth's department stores in
Greensboro, N.C. By a few months later, thousands of Black students were
organizing similar sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, which
eventually defeated the racist segregation laws. These sit-ins helped to launch
the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
What is the legacy of Rosa Parks? It is a legacy of struggle. But that legacy
is not just to review the past for nostalgia's sake. More important, it is to
take the lessons of the past and apply them to today's struggles.
Hurricane Katrina and the criminal neglect of the government exposed the ugly
truth that social conditions for Black people - especially in the Deep South -
have not changed fundamentally since 1955. The struggle for the right to return
to the Gulf Coast by displaced African Americans has sown the seeds of a united
front of Black activists who are organizing for a caravan march of Katrina
survivors from Jackson, Miss., to New Orleans on Dec. 10.
On Dec. 1-the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' blow against racist
segregation-community, labor, anti-war and other social forces will be
remembering this significant anniversary with a nationwide day of absence and
protest against racism, war and poverty. In New York on Oct. 27, City
Councilperson Charles Barron will host a news conference to announce that he
will introduce a resolution declaring Dec. 1 "Rosa Parks Day" in New York.
The resolution will call for employers to allow workers to leave work and for
students to leave classes on Dec. 1 to participate in a march and rally on Wall
Street in protest of the war makers. Student organizers will be organizing
walk-outs from their schools in honor of the struggle-oriented legacy of Rosa
Parks.
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