A rebel who changed America
By Nell Irvin Painter |
March 31, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
BEAUTIFUL Rosa Parks sits alone in the Montgomery, Alabama, city bus she desegregated, an image endlessly replicated, most recently on an American postage stamp issued in February to commemorate Black History Month and what would have been Parks's 100th birthday. By the time she died in 2005, Parks had become an American saint. President Bill Clinton gave her a Medal of Freedom in 1996; Congress awarded her a Gold Medal in 1999 (passed nearly unanimously - only Representative Ron Paul of Texas dissented); and after her death, her body lay in the Capitol Rotunda. She was the first woman to be so honored, and the first black woman to have a statue in her likeness placed in the National Statuary Hall of the Capitol.
In 1955, Parks defied the humiliating Jim Crow policy requiring a black person of any age or sex to defer to any white person by standing so the white person could sit. Her refusal and subsequent arrest inspired a 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that led to sit-ins, marches, campaigns and, finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The movement and laws it prompted wrought a revolution in American conventions of race and inaugurated Martin Luther King Jr as the conscience of America.
King carefully managed his public persona, but Parks's image escaped her control. She seems to have entered history with her mouth closed and her mind elsewhere.
But as Jeanne Theoharis shows in her insightful biography, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," this perspective obscures Parks's lifelong activism and "fierce determination." Parks was not an apolitical, middle-aged lady whose fatigue kept her seated. Both shy and militant, she was a committed activist enmeshed in racial politics wherever she lived.
Parks was politically active before and long after the Montgomery bus boycott, and her family was equally engaged. Her husband, Raymond, participated in the Communist-led movement defending the Scottsboro Boys. Parks spent a decade working alongside E.D. Nixon, the Pullman porters' unionist, in the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through the NAACP, Parks also met the veteran organizer Ella Baker, who mentored her. Throughout her career, she never shied away from progressives, even those labeled Communist.
On December 1, 1955, Parks left work - she was a seamstress in the tailoring department of the Montgomery Fair Department Store - and boarded a bus. When the seats in the white section filled up, the driver ordered black passengers to stand. Parks refused. She did not resist as the police arrested her and took her to city hall, asking her if she was drunk.
Her refusal was well considered. As she noted later, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day ... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
This first comprehensive biography rightly keeps an eye on Parks after this history altering incident. Theoharis depicts Detroit's entrenched discrimination and Parks' decades of civil rights activism there. Richly informative, passionate and much needed, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" completes the portrait of a working-class activist who looked poverty and discrimination in the face and never blinked.
In 1955, Parks defied the humiliating Jim Crow policy requiring a black person of any age or sex to defer to any white person by standing so the white person could sit. Her refusal and subsequent arrest inspired a 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that led to sit-ins, marches, campaigns and, finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The movement and laws it prompted wrought a revolution in American conventions of race and inaugurated Martin Luther King Jr as the conscience of America.
King carefully managed his public persona, but Parks's image escaped her control. She seems to have entered history with her mouth closed and her mind elsewhere.
But as Jeanne Theoharis shows in her insightful biography, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," this perspective obscures Parks's lifelong activism and "fierce determination." Parks was not an apolitical, middle-aged lady whose fatigue kept her seated. Both shy and militant, she was a committed activist enmeshed in racial politics wherever she lived.
Parks was politically active before and long after the Montgomery bus boycott, and her family was equally engaged. Her husband, Raymond, participated in the Communist-led movement defending the Scottsboro Boys. Parks spent a decade working alongside E.D. Nixon, the Pullman porters' unionist, in the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Through the NAACP, Parks also met the veteran organizer Ella Baker, who mentored her. Throughout her career, she never shied away from progressives, even those labeled Communist.
On December 1, 1955, Parks left work - she was a seamstress in the tailoring department of the Montgomery Fair Department Store - and boarded a bus. When the seats in the white section filled up, the driver ordered black passengers to stand. Parks refused. She did not resist as the police arrested her and took her to city hall, asking her if she was drunk.
Her refusal was well considered. As she noted later, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day ... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
This first comprehensive biography rightly keeps an eye on Parks after this history altering incident. Theoharis depicts Detroit's entrenched discrimination and Parks' decades of civil rights activism there. Richly informative, passionate and much needed, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" completes the portrait of a working-class activist who looked poverty and discrimination in the face and never blinked.
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