Great Strides, Great Sacrifices

"Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle..." 

(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom:  The Montgomery Story)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that if he were to make strides in his cause of Civil Rights, he would have to sacrifice.  His followers knew they would have to sacrifice.  For every gain there is a loss.  When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, her stance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  Rosa paid a price:  she spent a night in jail; she received so much scorn that she and her husband moved to Detroit about a year later.  But the boycott worked and in 1956, the busses were desegregated. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/09/rosa-parks-writes-about-her-arrest.html)

David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair Jr. knew they would have to sacrifice when they took their seats at a Greensboro lunch counter.  What they ordered was a cup of coffee and a donut; what they received was a peppering of hate by the surrounding crowd.  Their dignity was stretched to the limit.  But the Greensboro Four sparked sit ins in 55 other cities in 13 states.  Because of their stance, lunch counters became integrated across the country. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-greensboro-four.html)

James Peck knew that he would have to sacrifice when he joined the Freedom Riders in 1961.  A radical journalist, Peck was one of the white protesters campaigning for equal rights for blacks.  If racist whites treated blacks poorly, they treated whites even worse since they were considered traitors to their race.  At the Birmingham Trailways Bus Station, Peck and his fellow Freedom Riders were surrounded by an angry mob.  A riot broke out, led by the Ku Klux Klan, and Peck was beaten to within an inch of his life, sustaining severed injuries to his head and face.  Peck waited for an hour for an ambulance willing to take him to the all-white Carraway Methodist Hospital where they refused to treat him.  His price for supporting the Civil Rights cause was 53 stitches which he received at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.  In November of 1961, the interstate bussing laws changed allowing blacks and whites to sit together. (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-freedom-riders.html)

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid the price in many ways for his Civil Rights movement.  He spent many nights in jail for his protests.  He paid the ultimate price with his life, gunned down by an assassin in 1968.  "Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle..."

http://www.scoopnest.com/user/JMitchellNews/548866173559775232

Rosa Parks Writes About Her Arrest

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." 

(Rosa Parks)

Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person in 1955, helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.  While her name was forever etched on the history books, Parks paid a high price for her stance.  

Writing on a piece of Montgomery Department Store stationery, Parks explained:  

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." When I asked the policeman why we had to be pushed around, he said he didn't know.  'The law is the law.  You are under arrest.'  I didn't resist." (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7977373/rosa-parks-collection-documents)

The following year saw the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a successful tool to integrate public transportation in the city.  Parks lodged a protest against her arrest.  She was very much in the public eye.  Near the end of 1956, the seamstress was let go from her job at the Montgomery Department Store.  Her husband, who had been forbidden to discuss her case at work, was also let go from his position.  Old Jim Crow wasn't going to give up without a fight.

As Parks explained in her letter:

"little children are so conditioned early to learn their place in this segregated pattern as they take their first toddling steps and are weaned from their mother's breast."

In early 1957, Parks jumped through another hoop and secured her right to vote, at a time when few blacks had that right in the Deep South.  But the economic situation looked bleak in Alabama and Rosa and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit, Michigan by the early 1960's.  Rosa found work as a receptionist for a U. S. Congressman.  

For more information, read http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/12/on-rosas-ride.html.

*First published in 2015.

On Rosa’s ride to work and back

Down Cleveland Ave in fifty-five.

White bus driver Blake gave her flack,

But Rosa Parks would not move back.

Sewing suits from nine until five,

She did what she could to survive.

As more whites boarded, four blacks stalled.

Blake warned:  “Move back or I won’t drive!”

At six o’clock, Blake placed the call.

Police came and she took the fall.

Her only crime was being black.

She had paid her fare, after all.

Rosa’s bus ride launched the attack

On racist laws that hurt each black.

White bus driver Blake gave her flack,

But Rosa Parks would not move back.

Linda Jonasson
(August 28, 2008.)

Photo of Montgomery, Alabama bus at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan courtesy http://farm4.static.flickr.com.

Photo of Rosa Parks on Dec. 1, 1955 courtesy http://thegospelcoalition.org.

*First published in 2011.

Charles Morgan Jr.'s Speech That Shocked Birmingham

"A mad, remorseful community asks:  'Who did it?  Who threw that bomb?  Was it a Negro or a white?'  The answer should be:  We all did." (Charles Morgan Jr.)

On September 15, 1963, in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, a bomb went off at a Birmingham church, killing four young girls attending Sunday School.  The city was in shock.  Who would perform such a heinous crime?  It had only been a couple of weeks since Martin Luther King Jr.'s successful March on Washington.  It seemed like the closer blacks came to achieving their rights, the more racist whites attacked them.  

The day following the bombing, as the police searched the rubble of the church, a young white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. stood up before a group of businessmen at the Young Men's Business Club and expressed his outrage at the crime which had taken place.

"Four little girls were killed in Birmingham yesterday.  A mad, remorseful, worried community asks:  'Who did it?  Who threw that bomb?  Was it a Negro or a white?'  The answer should be:  We all did it."

Charles Morgan Jr. was tired of people "getting away with murder".  He was tired of seeing the South, which he deeply loved, be taken over by hatemongers.  He was tired of the "silent acquiescence of good people who saw wrong but didn't try to right it."  

"The 'who' is every individual who talks about the 'niggers' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbour and his son...The who is every governor who ever shouted for lawlessness and became a law violator.  It is every Senator and representative who in the halls of Congress stands and with mock humility tells everybody that things back home aren't really like they are.  It is courts that move every so slowly and newspapers that timorously defend the law."

Charles Morgan Jr. attended the University of Alabama where he studied law.  He was at the centre of the storm living in Alabama in the 1950's and 1960's.  He was active in state politics.

"Yesterday, when Birmingham , which prides itself of the number of churches, was attending worship services, a bomb went off and an all white police force moved into action, a police force which has been praised by city officials at least once a day for a month or so.  A police force which has solved no bombings.  A police force which many Negroes feel is perpetuating the very evils we decry."

Charles Morgan Jr. suffered for his remarks.  The phone calls started immediately, threatening his wife and son.  One caller described every place his family had been in the space of a day.  The threats became so real that Charles was forced to flee the state.  Here are his final remarks:

"Those four little Negro girls were human beings.  They had lived their fourteen years in a leaderless city:  a city where no one accepts responsibility, where everybody wants to blame someone else."

Note:  For more information about the Birmingham Church Bombing, visit http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2012/05/ballad-of-birmingham.html.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/the-speech-that-shocked-birmingham-the-day-after-the-church-bombing/279565/

Rosa Parks Writes About Her Arrest

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." 

(Rosa Parks)

Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white person in 1955, helped spark the Civil Rights Movement.  While her name was forever etched on the history books, Parks paid a high price for her stance.  

Writing on a piece of Montgomery Department Store stationery, Parks explained:  

"I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment I couldn't take it anymore." When I asked the policeman why we had to be pushed around, he said he didn't know.  'The law is the law.  You are under arrest.'  I didn't resist." (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7977373/rosa-parks-collection-documents)

The following year saw the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a successful tool to integrate public transportation in the city.  Parks lodged a protest against her arrest.  She was very much in the public eye.  Near the end of 1956, the seamstress was let go from her job at the Montgomery Department Store.  Her husband, who had been forbidden to discuss her case at work, was also let go from his position.  Old Jim Crow wasn't going to give up without a fight.

As Parks explained in her letter:

"little children are so conditioned early to learn their place in this segregated pattern as they take their first toddling steps and are weaned from their mother's breast."

In early 1957, Parks jumped through another hoop and secured her right to vote, at a time when few blacks had that right in the Deep South.  But the economic situation looked bleak in Alabama and Rosa and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit, Michigan by the early 1960's.  Rosa found work as a receptionist for a U. S. Congressman.  

For more information, read http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2011/12/on-rosas-ride.html.

Jackie Robinson Pens Protest Letter to Eisenhower

"I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience.  On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying:  'Oh no!  Not again.'

I respectfully remind you sir that we have been the most patient of all people." (Jackie Robinson)

It was 1958 -- eleven years since the first black man officially played in the National Baseball League; four years since the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education; three years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus; and one year since the National Guard escorted nine students to Little Rock High.  

Yet, America was still a long way from fulling integrating blacks into white society.  Jackie Robinson, who had integrated professional baseball, had just hung up his number 42 jersey.  He penned a letter to President Eisenhower indicating his frustration with the civil rights movement, which, after making giant strides, had seemed to stall.  

"I was sitting in the audience at the Summit meeting of negro leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience.  On hearing you say this, I felt like standing up and saying:  'Oh no!  Not again.' (www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/jackie_robinson_letter/).  I respectfully remind you sir that we have been the most patient of all people."  He pointed out that Negroes were striving to attain goals that Whites had already been granted over 150 years before.

"17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change," implored Robinson.  In 1958, Negroes represented about 10 percent of the American population, a significant amount.  Robinson wanted actions, not words, for the Civil Rights Movement to move forward.  

Robinson saw President Eisenhower's attitude of forbearance as encouraging, not discouraging, the segregationists.  He reminded the President about Governor Faubus, who, the previous year, had blocked the school entry of the Little Rock Nine.  

The baseball legend drove his point home by stating:  "would let it be known that America is determined to provide -- in the near future -- for Negroes -- the freedoms we are entitled to under the Constitution."

Note:  For more information about Jackie Robinson, read "You Give Me the Number, I'll Give You the Guts!" at http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2013/04/april-15.html.

Jackie Robinson (right) meets Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders circa 1950's courtesy http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2009/01/20090106142542jmnamdeirf0.8552515.html#axzz3l0Ucr18M.