Happy 100th birthday, rosa parks

[niyad]

Rosa Parks


Born Rosa Louise McCauley
February 4, 1913
Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.
Died October 24, 2005 (aged 92)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality American
Occupation Civil rights activist
Known for Montgomery Bus Boycott
Home town Tuskegee, Alabama
Spouse(s) Raymond Parks (1932–1977)
Signature

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".[1]

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps in the twentieth century, including Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin nine months before Parks. NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience.

Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a new minister in town who gained national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store.

. . .



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. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks

[kwassa]

1. when I met her, she must have been in her late '70s ..

She came to our church on the Sunday before MLK's holiday. Very tiny, very sweet lady.

[niyad]

2. I wish I had gotten a chance to meet her.

[demmiblue]

3. K&R

[malaise]

4. Happy Birthday dear lady

Rosa Parks had a profound influence on my life

[The Straight Story]

5. Thought you might like this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022310120

US News and world report, 1956 article on Rosa Parks (pro/con)
(main title: Remembering Rosa Parks on Her 100th Birthday)

Alabama's Bus Boycott: WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

For eight months Negroes in Montgomery, Ala., have maintained a boycott against that city's buses because races are segregated in seating. This has become one of the nation's major tests on the issue of segregation.

In the texts presented here, this boycott is discussed and evaluated by two men on opposite sides of the dispute. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister in Montgomery, states the Negro side, and Grover C. Hall, Jr., editor in chief of The Montgomery Advertiser, answers Dr. King.

The questions they raise, however, go far beyond the Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. King describes the bus dispute as only a part of a continuous and growing struggle by Negroes for full equality. In this struggle, he says, Negroes "cannot afford to slow up."

Mr. Hall calls the boycott a "supreme folly" on the part of the Negroes. He says the result is a hardening of attitude among the whites, who dare not yield on buses "lest they lie routed in the schools."

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/press-past/2013/02/04/remembering-rosa-parks-on-her-100th-birthday

CON: Remarks Opposing the Montgomery Bus Boycott

By Grover C. Hall, Jr.

One way or the other, whites will continue to ride segregated. Negroes will continue to ride in a pool of 200 cars and 14 station wagons, so long as the sumptuary ardor of Northern citizens maintains a flow of $5,000 a week to the car pool. This could go on for years, with the whites hurting not at all, except for the bus line that is largely a Negro utility. There is absolutely no pressure whatever to lift the boycott. So, for Dr. King, the "lone and level sands stretch far away."

In Dr. King's hortatory emissions, he explains that "He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword." Perhaps, as time goes on for the young man, he will have occasion, in lapses of euphoria, to ponder another wise saw, secular but arresting: "Who draws his sword upon a prince must throw away the scabbard."

This way or that, the whites are going to ride. There isn't going to be any desegregation of buses for, before that, the bus line would be abolished. The question for Dr. King is, therefore, how long he can maintain his jitney transportation for his 50,000 followers. If, a year or two from now, the Negro car pool strips its gears and conks out—well, Dr. King is in charge of the Contingency Division of the bus boycott, and I will not intrude.

But meanwhile, everybody is riding to work on one of the two bus lines, and Montgomery continues to get its share of the world's work done without loss of efficiency. Whites no longer talk about the bus boycott. That Negroes do not ride the buses in Montgomery is established as a virtual folkway. We white devils are offering passive resistance, though we do not talk quite so much about "love" as Dr. King.

[niyad]

7. thank you for that wonderful find. bookmarking for later.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

6. Happy Birthday Rosa Parks!!!!