An interview with Rosa Parks

By Jannell McGrew
Montgomery Advertiser

December 1, 2000

Forty-five years ago today, Rosa Parks wasn't a name synonymous with freedom, courage or equality. She was just a seamstress, riding a bus home from a hard day's work, who decided she'd had enough.

When ordered by bus driver James F. Blake that she must yield her seat in the first row of the black section of a Montgomery bus to a white man, Parks, then 42, said no.

"God sat with me," Parks said this week, "as I remained calm and determined not to be treated with less dignity than any other citizen of Montgomery."

She was arrested, fingerprinted, put behind bars, then bailed out. Others had been arrested for defying the segregation laws, so Parks' arrest garnered little attention from many in Montgomery - including this newspaper, which gave it a scant five paragraphs next to a jewelry store ad at the bottom of an inside page.

But this was different. Parks was a respected, well-regarded black laborer who worked for a downtown department store. She had many white friends, who didn't peg her a troublemaker, someone looking to cause a ruckus or make a stand.

Perhaps that's why Parks caused the first domino to fall in a long line that led to the demise of laws that kept blacks at the back of the bus.

Her arrest caused the civil rights movement to move. It brought to the forefront a young Montgomery preacher, the Rev. Martin Luther King, who would go on to galvanize the nation. And the boycott of the bus system that followed showed how non-violence and solidarity could be effective against oppression.

It's been said that Parks shrugs her shoulders when she's called "the mother of the civil rights movement." But she cannot dispute this: Her decision to stay in her seat on that December day was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow.

Today, Rosa Parks will be honored by the same city that put her in jail. She will be downtown again, not far from where the bus stopped on that fateful day 45 years ago, to watch Troy State University Montgomery open a library and museum in her honor.

The downtown university will unveil a three-story, 55,000-square-foot, "state-of-the-art" library designed to serve TSUM's 3,100 students and serve as a research center for the civil rights movement.

"I am very proud that Troy State University decided to undertake the creation of this unique museum," said Jack Hawkins Jr., chancellor of Troy State University system. "(It) is an important part in the continued revitalization of downtown Montgomery and it also serves both the community and the state as a focal point in our nation's history."

TSUM President Cameron Martindale said her school "seized the opportunity of preserving the memory of courageous acts and people, while using the property to best meet the needs of our students."

Parks said she's simply pleased that people will have "a beautiful facility for the citizens of Alabama and the world to learn more about the civil rights movement." Always an activist þ

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher.

At age 2, she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level to live with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester.

She attended the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States.

The school's philosophy of self-worth fell in line with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were."

Opportunities were few indeed.

"Back then," Parks said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down."

After attending Alabama State Teachers College, now Alabama State University, she married Raymond Parks in 1932 and made a home in Montgomery. Few are aware that both Parks - husband and wife - were active in many early struggles for equality.

The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, co-founded in Detroit by Rosa Parks in 1987 in her husband's memory, says in its history that "the era of legalized racial segregation caused (their) commitment to first-class citizenship for people of color.

"Self taught with minimal formal education, Raymond was a skilled barber. Rosa, a domestic worker and seamstress, finished high school after her marriage to Raymond," the institute's history reads. "They both encouraged others to register to vote, pool their financial resources, advocate for quality formal education and become involved in community development."

Douglas Brinkley, author of a recently released biography, "Rosa Parks," and a history professor at the University of New Orleans, said the couple worked together to gain rights for blacks.

"It was Raymond who helped trigger Rosa Parks' commitment to fighting social injustice through the NAACP," Brinkley said.

In 1943, Rosa Parks became one of the first women to join Montgomery's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

That same year, she worked with the NAACP's state president, E.D. Nixon, to mobilize a voter registration drive in Montgomery and was elected secretary of the Montgomery branch, a post she held until 1956.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Parks said, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens.

"...No one enjoyed segregation, but it had to be tolerated. I helped train the youth of the NAACP to peacefully protest segregation in the Montgomery Public Library." Becoming a legend þ

Popular legend has it that when Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man 45 years ago, she was tired and weary from a long day of work. The tale - told and retold countless times as the movement took hold - painted a vivid picture.

But was she tired because of her job that day? Or was she tired of subjecting herself to segregation - and knew if she defied the law, she would be arrested?

Evelyn Lowery, founder of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference Women, said the term "tired" is often taken out of context.

"Rosa Parks was physically tired but no more than anyone else after a long day of working," she said. "But what she was really 'sick and tired' of was the unfair treatment of blacks throughout the South.

"She was just tired of taking this, and she just said, 'I'm not going to take any more,'" Lowery said.

The NAACP, eager for the movement to take hold, capitalized on the "tired" reference to gain support, Brinkley said.

"After Rosa Parks was arrested and the boycott began, the NAACP was dogged in its effort to showcase Rosa Parks as being the tired seamstress in every woman - a woman whose feet were tired one day and refused to give up her bus seat," he said.

"In order for the NAACP to get money for the movement, they had to make sure she wasn't seen as a communist or socialist or some anti-American troublemaker. They went out of their way to downplay Rosa Parks' 30-year commitment to civil rights."

But Parks has said numerous times that she was weary of the treatment she and other blacks received every day of their lives.

"Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it," writes Parks in one of her books.

"I kept thinking about my mother and my grandparents and how strong they were. I knew there was a possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to me to do what I had asked of others."

Before her arrest, Parks often showed her distaste for segregation in her own quiet way. She walked up the stairs of buildings, for instance, rather than riding an elevator marked "blacks only."

Brinkley said the thought that her arrest was a purely spontaneous event "has cheated her out of her true historic role as one of the most prominent grass-roots activists of our century.

"They wanted to make her into a mythological figure beyond reproach, and they succeeded," he said.

Robert Nesbitt, 91, was a deacon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the congregation led by the Rev. King, at the time of Parks' arrest. He said he clearly recalls the events surrounding the boycott.

"When E.D. Nixon went and bonded her out, we had meetings about it. We decided that we would not ride the buses and that we would boycott," Nesbitt said. "We (later) decided to boycott the buses until our demands were met."

The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by King, called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 381 days and brought Parks, King and their cause to the attention of the world.

The boycott drew to a close shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Montgomery ordinance that caused Parks' arrest, thus outlawing racial segregation on public transportation in the city and throughout the South.

"One could say that Mrs. Parks' refusal to surrender her seat ... created an ever widening ripple of change throughout the world," said civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who served as Parks' lawyer. "The quiet exemplification of courage, dignity and determination mobilized people of various philosophies."

Brinkley said, however, he does not believe Parks was chosen by anyone to challenge the system.

"The bottom line is nobody chose her," Brinkley said. "She did not wake up that morning saying, "OK, I am going to get arrested. But a lifetime of injustice had brought her to that breakdown point. She had been aware that there was a movement afoot to integrate the bus transportation system."

"She has always been her own woman," he added. "She's never been scripted by anybody to do what she did."

Historian Gwendolyn Patton of Montgomery said, "Mrs. Parks' refusal to get out of her seat was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"And the movement that ensued, the Montgomery bus boycott movement, and the people were the straws that finally broke the back of Jim Crow."

Parks, responding in writing to questions submitted by the Montgomery Advertiser, also said her arrest was not a planned event.

"There is no way anyone could have planned that day," Parks said.

"But throughout the community organizations in Montgomery, we had been planning for freedom all of our lives." Parks' legacy continues þ

The Parks paid a heavy price for their activism. Rosa Parks lost her job as a seamstress. She and her husband were constantly harassed and threatened, which the family believes caused Raymond to suffer a nervous breakdown.

Eleven years after changing Montgomery and the nation, the Parks packed their bags and left Alabama for Detroit, where they continued to push for civil rights causes.

"He was always a dedicated and dutiful husband," Brinkley said of Raymond. "He just didn't want to see his wife murdered by white bigots."

In 1967, Rosa Parks accepted a job in the Detroit office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. She left the congressman's staff in 1988, 11 years after Raymond's death.

Rosa Parks, along with childhood friend Elaine Eason Steele, founded the Detroit institute in 1987 as a memorial to Raymond. Rosa went on to become an author, writing four books about her life, her passion for civil rights and her belief in helping shape America's youth.

"As I traveled throughout the country, I have seen more positive youth asking for direction than not," Parks said. "My desire to see youth reach their highest potential is embodied in the institute."

The institute sponsors an annual summer program for teen-agers called Pathways to Freedom. Young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement.

"There is work to do," said Parks in her memoir "Quiet Strength."

"That is why I cannot stop or sit still. As long as a child needs help, as long as people are not free, there will be work to do."

At age 87, she still she works to make the world a better place, said E. Randel T. Osburn, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

"She commanded the attention of the world by what she did on Dec. 1, 1955.

"But if we cannot move beyond that day and move to where she has lived all of the these years - and that is youth development - then we do a disservice to ... her legacy," he said.

Osburn and many others, including Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said they are the product of the work of Parks and King and the numerous other civil rights pioneers.

"I was moved by the civil rights activities," said Dees, a Mount Meigs native whose Montgomery-based organization is a leader in the fight against hate groups. "And the things people were doing- certainly sparking it here in Montgomery- brought it much closer to home to me. I had a front-row seat to history in my own hometown."

The first black mayor of Selma, James Perkins Jr., was only 2 years old when Parks was arrested. But he soon learned the story of her and the movement, told to him many times by his parents.

The power of the civil rights movement spilled into Selma on March 7, 1965, when civil rights marchers were beaten by state troopers and sheriff's deputies in Dallas County - a day known to the world as "Bloody Sunday."

"The efforts of the movement inspired my generation," said Perkins, who refers to himself as a "protest child of the '60s."

"I stand on the shoulders of those giants who came before me. The significance of Selma evolved out of the efforts of people like Mrs. Rosa Parks, those people in the '50s and '60s who took a bold stand for civil rights," he said.

Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright, who has pledged to bridge racial divides in the city, called Parks "a living example of dignity, integrity and standing up for what you know is right.

"It is only fitting Montgomery honor her life and her connection with the city."

Gov. Don Siegelman praised Parks' "legacy of inspiration to young women and men that underscores the fact that one person can make a difference."

John Lewis, now a congressman in Georgia, grew up near Troy. He was a 10th-grader following Parks' trial and "the drama of the Montgomery movement." In 1965, he was injured during the failed "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in Selma.

Lewis said he cherishes a picture he has of Parks and himself together.

"If it hadn't been for Rosa Parks, I wouldn't be where I am today. She emerged as a symbol of a mass movement, as a symbol of a people struggling to be free," Lewis said. "Her action served as an inspiration for me to dedicate my life to the cause of justice, to the cause of fairness and to the cause of one America."

Today's festivities in Montgomery will be the latest in a long line of honors recently bestowed on Parks.

In 1990, thousands of people were at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to celebrate her 77th birthday.

At the White House last year, President Clinton signed a bill to award the nation's highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, to Parks.

"Forty-five years ago, in Alabama, Rosa Parks boarded a public bus, took a seat, and began a remarkable journey," President Clinton said while signing the bill.

"Her action that December day was, in itself, a simple one; but it required uncommon courage," he said. "Rosa Parks' short bus trip, and all the distance she has traveled in the years since, have brought the American people ever closer to the promised land we know it can truly be."

At the award ceremony, Clinton said: "We must never ever, when this ceremony is over, forget about the power of ordinary people to stand in the fire for the cause of human dignity." A new battle to fight þ

Parks still has plenty of fight left in her.

In September, she hired Johnnie Cochran, the lawyer made famous by his defense of O.J. Simpson, to help her appeal a district court's decision allowing Atlanta rap group Outkast to use her name as the title of a song.

"When I asked, he said 'yes' in a second," said Gregory Reed in an interview with MTV. Reed leads Parks' team of lawyers.

She sued Outkast last year for using her name as the title of its Grammy-nominated song, "Rosa Parks," from 1998's "Aquemini."

The song's chorus is as follows:

Ah ha, hush that fuss/everybody move to the back of the bus/Do you wanna bump and slump with us/We the type of people make the club get crunk .

Her lawyers argued that the group exploited her name for profit, and they sought to block use of her name.

Outkast and its label, LaFace, said the First Amendment protects song titles.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Hackett upheld the rappers' right to use Parks' name in November, and Parks took the case to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to Parks' and the rappers' lawyers, both sides have submitted written arguments to the court. No court date is scheduled.

Cochran argues the song does not have First Amendment protection because, though the title carries Parks' name, the lyrics are not about her. Cochran took the case because "he has a lot of respect for Rosa Parks," his publicist Rachel Noerdlinger said.

Tyrone Means, a Montgomery attorney who represents the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Foundation Inc., in Washington D.C., said King's family has made similar efforts to protect King's name.

"The Kings have also been trying to protect the use of his name and his words for various purposes. They have tried to take control of the usage of the name so that they can prevent it from being used in a false light," he said.

The family went to the federal trademark office and filed papers that, in essence, copyrighted King's speeches, and they also attempted to make a trademark of his name.

"You have to get the permission of the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. to use his name legally," Means added. He believes that Parks should be concerned about the usage of her name by the group.

"I can't blame her, and my gut tells me that the law ought to provide her a remedy. People should not be able to use her name to commercially promote music where the music is something that impugns her character," he said.

"She has a good name and reputation, but by associating it with lewd and lascivious language and music, it damages her. I can't blame her for being concerned." No bitterness þ

Ten years ago, on her birthday, Rosa Parks said she would like to be remembered "as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people."

Asked recently to reflect upon that day 45 years ago and the city she once called home, there is no bitterness. Only hope.

"There have been many improvements in Montgomery, especially with people of color being elected to office, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the organizing of the Friendly Supper Club," she said.

"I feel there are still too many black people not in positions where they can affect change, however, I am sure progress will continue. That is my hope for Montgomery."

Would she do it all again? "Yes, because no one should have to live the way we did. Everyone deserves to be free."

Parks said she is honored by the accolades and pleased that her work has inspired so many. She is modest when responding to how she feels about being called the "mother of the civil rights movement."

"It is all right if that's what people want to call me," she said.

"Things have been said about me that were not so complimentary."